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Darby and Joan in the Arbour 



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the library of 

CONGRESS. 

Tw® Copies Received 

MAR 24 1905 

J>»Ki!rt!t Entry 

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01ASS A 21XC. "O' 

o*EStJk 


Copyright, 1905 , 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


Published in March , !po5 


My Dear DOROTHY ESTERBROOK 
Here is your promised Easter Book 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Odd One 1 

II. Breakers Ahead 15 

III. The Brighter Side 31 

IV. Joan Discovers Darby 45 

V. Bad Beginnings 60 

VI. The Founding of an Order 77 

VII. Guests 94 

VIII. A Drive that was not Driven 108 

IX. The Defection of Darby 122 

X. Joan’s Winter Turns to Glorious Summer 140 

XI. Speeding the Parting Guests 158 

XII. The Signal Code 174 

XIII. The Pride that Preceded 190 

XIV. A Fall and a Day of Reckoning .... 206 

XV. Silly Georgie 223 

XVI. The End of the Millennium 241 

XVII. Joan Acknowledges her I. O. U 258 

XVIII. The King Comes to his Own Again . . . 275 
XIX. Proves a Swan 294 










NUT-BROWN JOAN 


CHAPTER I 

THE ODD ONE 

SLENDER girl of fourteen, so 
tall that she looked as though her 
body had been too busy shooting 
upward to remember also to grow 
broad, sat in a dissatisfied attitude 
on the edge of a big armchair. Her toes turned 
slightly inward, her elbows rested on her knees 
while the palms of her hands supported and 
tightly pressed her face. It was a thin face, all 
brown-tinted — olive skin, dark brown hair, big, 
soft, yet keen brown, eyes. The nose was clear 
cut and fine in type, like the distinguished noses 
seen in old portraits, and which are sadly gone 
out of fashion. The mouth had plenty of decision 
in its full curves, and showed, even now, pushed 
out of shape though it was by the long fingers, 
that it might be a pretty mouth if it wore a more 




2 


Nut-Brown Joan 

contented expression, for when it smiled its 
corners went up with great sweetness and mirth, 
illumining the girlish face. 

The room was an anomaly. Low bookcases 
lined its four sides, and, regarding them only, it 
appeared to be a library; but light French prints, 
with a poster or two, flippant tidies and bits of 
needle work, gilt chairs and screens mingled 
with the good engravings on the walls and the 
solid leather-covered furniture, while Dresden 
bric-a-brac, representing swains and maidens of 
the most light-minded appearance, pertly elbowed 
the bronzes and casts on the bookcases. 

However, sunshine, bright autumnal sunshine, 
flooded the room from the bay window on its 
western side, and in that window, enjoying the 
declining sun like a cat, sat a portly lady darning, 
and occasionally raising her eyes to glance with 
an anxiously disapproving look at the oblivious 
little girl in — or more properly on — the arm- 
chair. 

At last she spoke, and her voice had the throaty 
richness and the rising inflection that betrays 
English birth. 


The Odd One 


3 


“ Joan, my dear/’ she said, “ what can you be 
thinking about? Or are you only doing what a 
little boy I know at home calls ‘ foozling ’ ? ” 

Joan straightened herself and her discontented 
face brightened with a laugh. “ Foozling, I’m 
afraid, Auntie Deb,’’ she said. “ I wasn't thinking 
much; only wishing and wishing! I'm always 
wishing, though." 

“ Girls of your age usually are, if they’re not 
kept busy working or playing," said Aunt Deb. 
“ Why don’t you darn stockings ? " 

Joan made a wry face, then laughed again. 

“ Which is that, work or play, auntie ? " she 
asked. “ Besides, I don't know how to darn 
stockings." 

“ It is high time that you learned," remarked 
her great-aunt, rolling the pair she had just 
finished into small compass and giving it a com- 
pleting blow with her first. “ When I came I 
found that nurse had far too much to do for 
universal well-doing, so I took charge of the 
stockings. Have you no tasks set you, Joan?" 

“ There’s no one to set me any," said Joan quite 
honestly. “ Mama is such an invalid, and has to 


4 Nut-Brown Joan 

take so much medicine and see the doctor so often, 
she can’t look after us, you know.” 

“ And why are you not at school ? ” asked Aunt 
Deb, after she had adjusted her mind to this point 
of view — it was exceedingly hard for that vigor- 
ous lady to be patient with nervous invalidism. 

“ Why, I was brought home for Cousin Nettie’s 
funeral just after the term began,” said Joan. 
“ They had sent me to a boarding school, not the 
one here where Georgie and Trude go. But — 
though it’s horrid at home — I’m not sure I should 
have liked that school ; I’m ’most sure I shouldn’t. 
That’s not why I didn’t go back, though ; I don’t 
know why — I guess they forgot to send me.” 

Aunt Deb took off her glasses to look at her 
grandniece at this speech; Aunt Deb always put 
on her glasses to see things, and took them off to 
see people. She discovered no trace of intended 
sarcasm in the brown little countenance before 
her; Joan had unmistakably meant but to state a 
fact. 

“ Why do you call home horrid, Nut-Brown 
Maiden ? ” asked Aunt Deb, wisely ignoring the 
final statement of her niece’s remark. 


The Odd One 


5 


“ Oh, because I don't enjoy myself in it much 
— it's so lonely, you see,” replied Joan, tucking 
one foot under her and clasping both hands 
behind her head. 

“ Lonely! Really, that is the very last com- 
plaint I should expect to hear of this household ! ” 
cried Aunt Deb. “ There surely are enough of 
you children ! One would think you could man- 
age not to be lonely with six brothers and sisters, 
Joan ! ” 

“ Oh, yes ; we're a big family,'' assented Joan. 
“ But there aren't enough to go round. Hen and 
Ken are babies, and they make one pair. And 
Dick and Trude are chummy, considering. Then 
I come in, then Guy, and we don’t see much of 
each other. And then there’s Georgie, so there 
isn't anyone for me.” 

“ Well, and there is Georgie,” amended Aunt 
Deb. “ Your sister is but a trifle above two 
years your elder — why are you not intimate ? ” 

“Now, Aunt Deb!” protested Joan. “You 
may have been here only two weeks, but you must 
have seen that Georgie and I are just miles apart! 
She thinks I'm a baby, and I think she's ” 


6 


Nut-Brown Joan 

Joan pulled herself up in her impetuous speech. 
She was about to say that she considered her sister 
a goose, but remembered that it was not loyal 
to prejudice this new great-aunt from England 
against Georgie. Though Georgie did not seem 
to think Aunt Deb any consequence, Joan was 
beginning to covet her good opinion. 

“Georgie is very fluffy and pretty,” remarked 
Aunt Deb drily. 

“ Oh, my, yes ! Georgie has always been like 
that! When we were little girls if mama took us 
out anywhere people always said : ‘ How lovely 
your elder little girl is, Mrs. Darrington ! What 
beautiful hair, like spun gold! And such exqui- 
site pink and white skin ! ’ And there was I, just 
as I am now, black as a young crow, and as thin, 
and all eyes like one ! ” Joan sat up to deliver her 
grievance, moved to confidence in Aunt Deb, 
though she had never before mentioned to anyone 
what was the burden of her life. 

“For shame, Joan! Jealous of Georgie! 
Grudging her her beauty ! ” exclaimed Aunt Deb, 
though she did not believe her own accusation as 
she made it. 


The Odd One 


7 

“ No, indeed, auntie! Please don't think I'm 
so dreadfully mean as that! ” Joan said earnestly. 
“ I was always proud of Georgie — I love pretty 
girls — and I wouldn't have her one bit different, 
not in looks, anyway ! But I can't help wishing I 
was just the least wee bit pretty too — and it isn’t 
easy to hear mama say, as she always does : ‘ It 
looks as well as anything would on Joan.’ Or, 
‘ Don’t get bright, light things for Joan; she’s so 
dark and scrawny it would make her look worse 
— brown is the only thing for poor Joan ! ' I hon- 
estly think mama is ashamed of me, and since 
I've grown so fearfully long it's worse than 
ever. 

“ It's perfectly awful to be a homely girl, auntie. 
They're all proud of Georgie — so am I, though, 
honestly! I suppose you're disgusted with me, 
but I just can’t help it; I can't get strong-minded 
enough to rise superior to my long, thin brown 
homeliness to save my life. Even when I think 
I'm more sensible than Georgie, and may be a 
great writer, or a fine doctor, or something clever, 
it doesn't help me for more than a minute, because 
I’m just certain sure, if any girl spoke the truth, 


8 


Nut-Brown Joan 

she’d say she’d rather be pretty than anything else 
in all the world. At any rate, I would.” 

Joan hurled the last words at her aunt as if she 
were throwing down a gauntlet, but Miss Chis- 
holm did not take it up. On the contrary, she laid 
down her darning and came over to where Joan 
was sitting. 

“I’m not in the least disgusted with you, my 
dear, and I am quite sure you do not mean any- 
thing that is unkind or envious of Georgie,” she 
said. “ I think it is hard to be the ugly duckling, 
and I am glad to see that it has not made you 
unjust to your sister. But you remember, of 
course, how the ugly duckling turned out ? Little 
girls with Georgie’s blonde prettiness need no 
developing, but brown lassies, like our Joan, go 
through a chrysalis process, and often emerge very 
passable indeed. I think there are people who 
would find Joan not ill-looking now, if she did not 
look discontented, and would not dawdle. How- 
ever, the sensible way is not to dwell much on the 
question of looks. When you’re older you will 
appreciate the charm of cleverness — believe me, 
my dear, it is far superior to beauty. But if you 


The Odd One 


9 


will be bright and sunny and contented, Joan, 
you won’t be ill to look at when you’re grown. Do 
you know, at home in England we do not use the 
word homely as you do here? We should think it 
very fine to be a homely girl.” 

“What does it mean there?” asked Joan du- 
biously; she suspected a moral, and felt a natural 
objection to it. 

“ It means a girl who loves home and makes it 
pleasant, one who has sweet, womanly traits. I 
think you are clever enough to make a thoroughly 
homely girl. You have no idea, apparently, 
how much pleasanter this house would be if you 
took hold of it in that spirit, nor how much com- 
fort you would get out of Dick and Trude if you 
made their acquaintance — not to mention hand- 
some Guy, who, I suspect, would be no worse 
for his sister’s friendship,” said Aunt Deb, so 
cheerfully that it did not sound preachy. 

“ And then to think of being named Joan ! ” 
said the bearer of that name, too embarrassed to 
reply to her aunt’s little homily, yet half brighten- 
ing as her lively imagination recognised possibili- 
ties in the hopes held out to her. “ It’s such a 


io Nut-Brown Joan 

homely — no, must I say such an ugly name? As 
brown as I am. Sound like overalls ! ” 

“ It sounds like nothing of the sort, you queer 
child,” said Aunt Deb, laughing in spite of her- 
self. “ Where is your history? Was Joan of 
Arc homespun ? But don't let me hear you com- 
plain of your name, miss, or you and I can not be 
friends! You are named after your grandmother, 
my dear sister Joan, and you should wear the 
name as a crown, grateful if you are not wholly 
unworthy to wear it. One day, if you are not 
too indolent and discontented and selfishly indif- 
ferent to your home and your brothers and sisters, 
I'll tell you the story of my sister Joan’s life.” 

Joan sat up, her cheeks flushing, her eyes flash- 
ing at these epithets, which stung her, as her aunt 
meant them to. Joan had drifted into the habit 
of feeling that her home — which indeed, left 
much to be desired — was a cross laid upon her; 
that her brothers’ and sisters’ uncongeniality was 
a cross also. It never occurred to her that she was 
in the least responsible for the general unsatis- 
factoriness. 

She was a child who loved honour and fair play 


The Odd One 


ii 


more than most girls. It would be dreadful if she, 
Joan Darrington, were not playing fair, but really 
was selfish, lazy, whining! Before she could ask 
her aunt if she actually deserved to be thus ac- 
cused, the door opened and a girl of sixteen 
entered, preceded by breezes laden with helio- 
trope sachet powder. She was shorter than Joan 
by half a head ; her lithe little figure was arrayed 
in a very tight gown, her tiny feet encased in 
patent leather shoes — low shoes, though it was 
beginning to get cold — with exaggerated Louis 
XV. heels. Her beautiful hair — pure golden, and 
not yellow — was so dried by much soda that it 
stuck out around her face in a way no Skye terrier 
could hope to emulate. 

“ I suppose you don’t care to take a walk, 
Jeanne? ” said this fashionable young person. 

Aunt Deb looked up sharply. “ Georgie,” she 
said, “ I should be much obliged if you would 
never again mispronounce your sister’s name in 
that way. The name is an honourable inheritance ; 
she is English Joan, a character I trust she may 
maintain, and she must never let the name, nor 
her ideal of it, be corrupted.” 


12 


Nut-Brown Joan 

“ Dear me, aunt, how fussy you are ! ” ex- 
claimed Georgie, with a petulant laugh. “ It 
would be a real kindness to call the poor child 
something pretty. Well, will you come, Jo-an?” 

“ Are you going down to that old five o’clock 
mail again, Georgie Darrington ? Indeed I won’t 
go! I don’t see how you can be so silly.” And 
Joan turned up her nose in impolite rejection of 
her invitation. 

“You needn’t lecture me, miss, nor be so rude 
when I invite you to walk with older girls,” cried 
Georgie. “ There isn’t the least harm in going 
down to the post office at night.” 

“ It isn’t nice,” said Joan decidedly. “ I never 
said it was exactly harm, but I wish you wouldn’t 
go, Georgie.” 

“ Nevertheless, I am going,” said Georgie, turn- 
ing on her French heels, and tossing her fluffy 
head. “ The next time I ask you, you’ll know 
it ! ” And a waft of heliotrope, following the 
slam of the library door, announced the indignant 
departure of Georgie. 

“ What about the post office? Why do you 
disapprove it, my dear?” asked Aunt Deb.- 


The Odd One 


13 


“ I don’t disapprove of the post office, auntie — 
it’s all right,” said Joan, with a twinkle. “ But at 
night a lot of girls go to get the last mail, and not 
one of them expects a letter, probably, and you 
know how it is in a suburban place — everyone 
knows us, and Georgie is so pretty, and does gig- 
gle so — I can’t help saying she does — and it looks 
as if she went down just to be seen too, like the 
rest of them. And — well some of the girls aren’t 
quite nice and quiet in the streets, people no- 
tice It’s no harm,” said Joan, breaking off. 

Then she added, in an irrepressible burst of 
honest, girlish disgust : “ It makes me so mad 
with Georgie for going with that crowd I really 
can’t stand it ! I’m only fourteen, but I wouldn’t 
be such a silly!” 

Aunt Deb refrained from suggesting that it 
might be because she was fourteen, and not six- 
teen, that Joan was so sensible, for age does not 
always bring wisdom. Instead she asked : “ Does 
your father know that Georgie goes down to the 
last mail ? ” 

“ Oh, papa!” exclaimed Joan, uncoiling her- 
self and rising. “ Papa is rather busy. There 


I 4 


Nut-Brown Joan 

isn’t a bit of harm in Georgie, auntie,” she added, 
fearing that she had got her sister into a scrape. 
“ She goes down just for fun, and she doesn’t 
see that the other girls are ninnies.” 

“ Decidedly,” thought Aunt Deb, as the girl’s 
tall figure disappeared down the hall, “ decidedly 
my nephew’s children need looking after. And 
still more decidedly I’m going to find my grand- 
niece Joan, the homely girl, well worth culti- 
vating.” 


CHAPTER II 


BREAKERS AHEAD 

OAN went to her room to con- 
sider; she considered more or 
less for a week, in the midst of 
the excitement of a premature 
cold snap and unexpected skating. 

Aunt Def> was wise enough not to spoil her hint 
by an additional word; she abhorred anything 
like nagging, and had confidence in Joan’s clever- 
ness to fill out the outline sketch which she had 
made of future possibilities for the restless, un- 
guided little girl. 

The more she thought about it the better Joan 
liked the picture. It really was not bad to become 
the leading spirit of home, transforming the desert 
into a garden, even though her dreams had always 
taken the form of a great public career. Here- 
tofore she had seen her grown-up self as a famous 
doctor, or the greatest American woman writer 
15 




1 6 Nut-Brown Joan 

— both, very possibly, since “ Hugh Wynne,” 
which she had read admiringly, was written by 
a physician. For the child was a dreamer of 
dreams, and saw the imaginary Joan in heroic 
proportions, although she was inclined to under- 
value her real self. 

It was not easy to begin where there was every- 
thing to be done, profound ignorance on the part 
of the would-be reformer, and a foolish self-con- 
sciousness that prevented her from asking Aunt 
Deb's help. But Joan did not make the mistake 
of so many older beginners and wait for some- 
thing tremendous to do. Aunt Deb noticed, with 
amused satisfaction, that Joan had taken to dust- 
ing the library every morning, giving the room, 
which was the family sitting room, that look of 
habitableness which the maids had a talent for 
eliminating. She had begun to play with the 
younger children, who hailed her attentions rap- 
turously, for Joan’s lively imagination and high 
spirits made her an ideal comrade when she con- 
descended to their level. 

It was Saturday morning, and all the young 
Darringtons were gathered in the library, Georgie 


Breakers Ahead 


17 

and Guy with gloom on their faces, because a 
thaw had come, and skating, on that day of all 
days, when there was no school, was out of the 
question. 

Mrs. Darrington breakfasted in her room, and 
rarely appeared before luncheon. Aunt Deb sat 
in her favourite window patting Kenneth’s head, 
drooping on her breast, as he sat on her lap enjoy- 
ing the disgraceless cuddling following the bind- 
ing up of a finger which he had slightly cut. 

Six year old Henley, who had been the baby 
until Kenneth had usurped the position four years 
ago, stood by surveying his junior and chum with 
serious eyes. Dick was bent double over a book, 
as he had been most of the time for eight of his 
twelve years of life. Trude, near him as usual, 
waited with her customary calmness until he 
should be ready to go out. 

Joan stood on a chair before one of the book- 
cases, not daring to trust even her long arms to 
reach its ornaments from the floor. She shook her 
duster impatiently, and glanced with extreme dis- 
favour at the simpering Dresden marquise before 
her. 


1 8 Nut-Brown Joan 

“ Don’t you think, auntie,” she said, “ that we 
might have mama bookcase tops and papa book- 
case tops?” 

“And don’t you think, my dear, that you 
might be a trifle more intelligible ? ” retorted Aunt 
Deb. 

Guy’s gloom broke up in a laugh ; his sense of 
humour was hard to down. 

“I know what she means,” he said. “The 
busts, old brasses, bronzes, casts and things 
father buys, and the other sort of stuff is 
mama’s.” 

“ Yes,” continued Joan, “ and they are so queer 
together! Just look at this silly china person 
right beside this splendid Discobolus! I should 
think they would be better assorted.” 

“And I should think it would hardly do for us 
to meddle with our elders’ arrangement of their 
own room,” said Aunt Deb. 

“You can’t be an iccon o’clast,” remarked 
Dick, making two distinct words of the one, 
and pronouncing it as if it were an Irish proper 
name. Dick dearly loved long words, though he 
frequently found them somewhat unmanageable. 


Breakers Ahead 


19 

“What does that mean?” asked Guy, to catch 
him. 

“An image breaker; I read it in something 
yesterday, and looked it up,” said Dick, with 
quiet triumph. 

“ It’s no good trying to trip up Richard,” said 
Joan. “ I honestly believe I should like to break 
them, Diccon; but I’d be satisfied with driving 
them into their own pens.” 

“ They are not animals, Joan,” remarked 
Trude, the literal. 

It was curious to see the difference between 
all the Darringtons. Georgie, blonde, pretty, 
feather-brained; Guy, handsome, dark, daring, 
easy-going; Joan, quick, impetuous, clever and 
thoughtful; Dick, pale, dreamy, studious, com- 
bining Georgie with Guy and Joan in colouring; 
Gertrude, fair, with brown eyes and hair, slow 
of thought and speech, plump and phlegmatic, 
yet the artist of the family, seeing very true with 
her wide eyes, and drawing marvellously well 
for a little girl of ten; Hen and Ken, one fair 
and gentle, the other the darkest tinted of all 
the family, with a positive genius for getting into 


20 


Nut-Brown Joan 

scrapes and breaking bones. It was no wonder 
that Aunt Deb felt that she had before her a 
large task in looking after this heterogeneous 
little flock. 

Joan descended from her perch. “I’ve been 
thinking out a plan,” she said, the colour mount- 
ing as she realised that Aunt Deb would under- 
stand what had inspired her. “ A plan for 
something nice for us to do,” she added, as 
nobody took the trouble to inquire into her idea. 

“I wish it would freeze,” remarked Georgie, 
yawning slightly. 

“ Joan was going to say something,” said Guy, 
frowning. “Fire away, J.” 

“I thought it might be nice to form a secret 
society,” Joan began. 

“Too babyish,” interrupted Georgie. “And 
what would be the fun, anyway, just ourselves?” 

“ I don’t see how it can be babyish unless there 
are babies in it,” retorted Joan, nettled as Georgie 
had meant her to be. “We shouldn’t have to 
keep it to ourselves, either, if we didn’t choose 
to.” 

“What kind of a society?” asked Guy. 


Breakers Ahead 


21 


“ None of your old book clubs or circles ! And 
how could it be secret, if girls were in it?” 

“Now, Guy, you know I can keep a secret!” 
said Joan reproachfully. 

“ Yes ; you can,” said Guy handsomely, remem- 
bering an important occasion when Joan had done 
so. “ But how about Georgie ? ” 

“ I thought it would be nice to do deeds, adven- 
tures, and daring things, and have a badge, and 
meetings, and relate our adventures. We should 
each solemnly promise to be brave, and secret, 
and sure,” said Joan hastily, as Georgie scowled 
ominously at Guy. 

“ It isn't half bad, if you were all any good at 
carrying it out, but it would be kid stuff; I'd 
rather have such a society with the fellows.” 

“ We could ask my set ; then it might be inter- 
esting,” said Georgie condescendingly. 

“ Oh, I meant this to be something to do when 
we were alone, and didn’t know what to do,” said 
Joan, not very lucidly, finding, like many another 
founder, that her followers exaggerated her ideas 
into a distortion of them. 

“Our first adventure might be to investigate 


22 


Nut-Brown Joan 

the haunted house,” said Dick, as quietly as 
though it were the most natural suggestion. 

There was a shout, after a moment of stunned 
silence ; one never knew what to expect from quiet 
Dick. None of the Darringtons had ever dared 
approach the mysterious deserted house, which 
bore a most forbidding reputation. 

“Let's go there to-day!” cried Guy, starting 
up, but his suggestion was destined not to be 
carried out. 

“ Miss Chisholm, please, Mrs. Darrington 
would like to see you in her room, and would 
Miss Georgie and Miss Johanna come wid ye?” 
said Maggie, the waitress, standing twisting her 
apron in the doorway. One of Joan’s greatest 
small trials was this girl’s version of her not-too 
acceptable name. 

Aunt Deb set Ken on his feet and led the way 
upstairs, followed by the wondering girls. Guy, 
deprived of his despised feminine allies, who 
were, after all, better than no one in the midst of 
inertia, took his cap and flung himself out of the 
house. 

Georgie and Joan were not alarmed at finding 


Breakers Ahead 


23 


their mother in tears ; the weakness of Mrs. Dar- 
rington’ s nerves made them a thing of frequent 
occurrence. But Aunt Deb was too lately arrived 
in the household to regard them lightly, and she 
went hastily to her niece-in-law’s sofa, crying: 
“ My dear, what is it ? Has anything happened ? ” 
“ Enough has happened,” moaned Mrs. Dar- 
rington. “First, read that!” And she handed 
her husband’s aunt a letter. 

Aunt Deb read it with a puzzled face, while 
the girls waited with considerable anxiety. 

When she had finished Aunt Deb asked : “ Who 
is this girl? I could not quite understand.” 

“ She is the child of my widowed sister, just 
Joan’s age,” replied Mrs. Darrington. “ It is the 
most unfortunate thing! I never could endure 
her father, and he died precisely when he was 
most needed.” 

Joan laughed, thinking her mother meant this 
for a jest, but Aunt Deb shook her head at her 
while she asked : “ Are you going to take her ? ” 

“What can I do?” sighed Mrs. Darrington 
helplessly. “ She has no one else ; my sister is 
left without a penny. I promised if worse came 


24 Nut-Brown Joan 

to worse I would look after the child, but just 
now ” 

“Mama, what does it all mean?’’ cried 
Georgie. “Not that you are going to adopt some 
horrid girl, as old as Joan? ” 

“ She may not be horrid, my darling beauty- 
girl,” said her mother, looking fondly at the 
pretty, peevish face. “ She is your own cousin. 
I don’t see how we can help letting her come here ; 
not adopted, you know ” 

“ Well, it is a perfect shame ! ” interrupted 
Georgie hysterically, but Joan in turn interrupted 
her. 

“ I think it is a nuisance, myself,” she said. 
“But if she is quite poor, and our own cousin, 
how can we help letting her come here, as mama 
says? It won’t make any real difference; there 
is such a lot of us, all going our own ways, and 
I suppose she can go another way. Is it Sophie 
Ivins, mama?” 

“ Yes; I wish now we had had her here visiting, 
and knew something of her,” sighed Mrs. Dar- 
rington. 

“ Well,” said Joan, the unconscious philosopher, 


Breakers Ahead 


25 


“ if she has to come anyway, it doesn’t matter, for 
if we like her when we know her, it will be all 
right, and if she should be horrid, as Georgie said, 
it’s better not to dread her.” 

“ Pay her board in a school, and don’t let her 
come,” said Georgie angrily. “I don’t believe 
we have to be bothered with her. If she comes 
I’ll never rest till I have teased you into sending 
me away to school. I shouldn’t mind going, any- 
way; not if it was a fashionable finishing school, 
where you didn’t have to study.” 

“Oh, my darling, I hope your cousin won’t 
annoy you! Try not to mind her, my precious,” 
cried poor Mrs. Darrington. “ There really is 
no escape from the charge of Sophie, and as to 
sending her, or you, away to school, my blessing, 
it is sadly, dreadfully impossible ! My dear, sen- 
sitive little girl, I have been dreading to tell 
you, but your father has gotten his business into 
a very bad state, and for all I know he has ruined 
us!” 

Georgie uttered a scream that would have done 
credit to an adept in hysteria, while Aunt Deb 
started up with an exclamation of horror, but 


26 Nut-Brown Joan 

Joan’s eyes filled with angry tears. The fact 
stated by her mother bore no significance to her 
youthful ears; indeed she hardly heard her say 
that they might be ruined, but she caught the 
implied blame of her father, and her cheeks 
flamed. Afar off, Joan loved her father more 
than any other earthly object. Mr. Darrington 
was such a busy man, so occupied in providing 
for his little brood and trying to amass an inheri- 
tance for them, that, like many another American 
father, he knew them but slightly. Joan was his 
own daughter, and, though she rarely had a 
chance to test it, was conscious of sympathy 
between her nature and her father’s, a sym- 
pathy which led her to exalt him into a hero and 
worship him mutely. 

Now, as her feeble mother’s tearful voice 
accused him — or she thought it did — Joan quiv- 
ered between the desire to defend him and pity 
for the poor invalid. 

“ Papa can’t have got his affairs into a bad 
state, mama dear,” she cried, her own voice shak- 
ing. “ You know he is a splendid business man 
— everyone says so. If something ruined us, he 


Breakers Ahead 


27 


couldn’t help it, but I’m sure he’ll keep ruin off ; 
he can do anything he chooses. If we were 

ruined What does ruined mean, anyway ? ” 

she asked, breaking off suddenly. 

“ It means being poor, miss, and having noth- 
ing nice to wear, or do, or eat,” said Georgie 
spitefully. “ If papa has lost his money I’ll 
never forgive him — just when I’m almost grown 
up too ! ” And Georgie burst into tears of self- 
pity. 

Aunt Deb laid her hand, kind and firm, on 
Joan’s wrist, for she saw her shrink at this heart- 
less speech. 

“ Matters are not so bad, I dare say,” said Miss 
Chisholm; “but if they were, it would be more 
daughterly, Georgie, to think how you could help 
your father — who, as Joan says, is a clever man, 
and who would rather die than see one of his 
children want — than to think only of yourself.” 

“ Be gentle with Georgie, Aunt Deborah,” 
moaned Mrs. Darrington. “ There is excuse for 
her thinking of herself in this tragedy. You do 
not realise how sensitive she is ; she is not adapted 
to meeting privation, as Joan would be. They are 


28 Nut-Brown Joan 

as different in temperament as they are in 
appearance.” 

Aunt Deb looked anxiously at Joan; she saw 
her fold her lips trying not to betray that she 
minded being “the ugly duckling,” or that she 
was hurt by her mother’s tenderness of Georgie. 

“ No, I shouldn’t mind being poor,” Joan said 
quickly. “It would give us something to think 
about.” 

“ It is because your father is so seriously em- 
barrassed that you were not sent back to school, 
after my cousin’s funeral, so you are the one on 
whom the first effect has fallen, Joan,” said her 
mother. 

“Then papa did not forget me?” said Joan 
simply. “ I thought he had forgotten me ; I’m 
glad it was money that kept me at home. We’ll 
find a way to help him. Don’t cry, Georgie; it 
mayn’t be so bad. If it is, I’m sure I can learn 
to cook and sew and do all those things, and you 
— you might make floating island, at least.” 
And queer Joan laughed at her own perception of 
the suitability of Georgie’s producing that ephem- 
eral dessert. 


Breakers Ahead 


29 


Aunt Deb laughed too, thankful to see that 
Joan’s sense of humour was going to take her 
through life’s hard places unembittered. Mrs. 
Darrington looked from one to the other with 
disapproving wonder, not understanding how 
anyone could jest at misfortune. 

“ Please go down with aunt, Joan,” she said, 
“ and you, my sweet Georgie, stay with your poor 
mama — we will comfort each other.” 

Aunt Deb and Joan left the room on this hint. 
There was no sign of dawdling now in the girl’s 
face or carriage. She had drawn herself up to 
her full height, her head thrown back, her eyes 
flashing, her cheeks flushing through their beau- 
tiful olive tint. 

Trude met them in the hall and looked at 
Joan with an eye that was already an artistic 
one, though it had surveyed the world but ten 
years. 

“My! How pretty you are, Joan!” cried 
Trude, stopping short in wondering admiration 
of the sister in whom she alone had ever seen 
beauty. “ How very, very splendid you are ! ” 

“ Pretty! ” cried Joan, and then laughed. “ It 


30 


Nut-Brown Joan 

must be because I am learning to be homely; is 
that it, auntie? ” 

And staid Trude looked after Joan, wondering 
no less at this remark, which struck her as slightly 
demented, than at Joan's sudden glory of air and 
tint. 


CHAPTER III 



THE BRIGHTER SIDE 

PRNLEIGH, the suburb of New 
York in which Mr. Darrington 
had elected to bring up a family 
not nearly as large when he 
moved there as it had since be- 
come, had not many secluded nooks to harbour 
children. The houses stood behind their correct 
lawns, which prolonged themselves into equally 
prim and correct back yards, but land was too 
precious and the demand for it too great to allow 
the spreading orchards and tangled meadows so 
dear to all youthful hearts at any age. 

However, the Darrington place was larger 
than most of its neighbours, and in its rear there 
was an unrented estate which had been allowed 
to relapse, to a great extent, to its original wild- 
ness. In the further corner of its disordered 


31 


32 Nut-Brown Joan 

lawn there was an unkempt arbor vitae bower 
which long custom had secured to Joan as a re- 
treat respected by her brothers and sisters. This 
spot she sought when trouble overtook her; here 
she came in summer to dream or read, prone on 
her face, with her heels pointing toward heaven, 
until her increasing length brought them too far 
in that direction for the position to be either 
decorous or comfortable. When the chill of 
autumn prevented her from lying down to enjoy 
the spidery solitude of her den, she still took 
refuge in it, wandering up and down until she 
had settled the matter puzzling her, or perfected 
the plan growing in her busy brain. 

Now, as she left her mother’s room, excited 
and troubled over the two-fold bad tidings which 
she had just heard, her feet turned at once to her 
haven, and once again she felt what she herself 
called “the wrinkles in her” smoothing out in 
the silence and among the pungent odours of the 
evergreens. She wanted to think. For the first 
time in her fourteen years she felt herself face 
to face with responsibility — these were days to 
try a girl’s mettle. It seemed to her incumbent 


33 


The Bright Side 

upon the feminine portion of the family to rouse 
up to meet misfortune, and it did not occur to 
her to doubt that she must be the one to do it. 
She had never heard it said that the first proof 
of a vocation to a certain work was fitness for 
that work, but instinct made her act upon that 
theory and cudgel her brains for a way to help 
her father in misfortune. 

For a long time she considered, kicking up the 
sod covered by the dead brown foliage of the 
arbor vitae. Although she longed to do some- 
thing very splendid, such as writing a glorious 
book which should raise all the Darringtons at 
once and forever above anxiety, she had a 
common-sense side which counteracted the flights 
of her lively fancy, and she knew quite well that 
the only thing she could possibly do would be 
prosaically to help economise. 

“I’m going to talk to papa,” she said aloud, 
suddenly addressing a chickadee dropping from 
bough to bough near her. “ I’ve got to find out 
just how ruined we are. Maybe he will tell me 
when he knows I only want to do whatever he’d 
rather we would do. Poor papa! He’s ’most as 


34 


Nut-Brown Joan 

lonely in this big family as I am, I guess! I 
wonder if he’ll be angry with me for med- 
dling!” 

It took considerable courage for Joan to reach 
this conclusion. Never in her life had she gone 
to her father with confidence ; much as she loved 
him, she feared him, nor was this her fault, since 
Mr. Darrington had allowed himself to be a 
stranger to his children. He came home early 
that afternoon, and Joan heard him shut himself 
into his smoking room upstairs, turning the key 
in the lock to secure himself against an interrup- 
tion which was more than unlikely to come. But 
Joan meant, this time, to interrupt him, and with 
as palpitating a heart as beat in the breast of 
her namesake of Domremy when she came before 
the king, Joan gave a meek little knock on the 
door. 

“ Who is it ? ” called her father. 

“It’s Joan, papa; won’t you please see me for 
a few minutes? It’s rather important,” replied 
a faint little voice that Joan hardly recognised 
for her own. 

Mr. Darrington strode across the room, and 


The Bright Side 35 

opened the door with somewhat unnecessary 
force. “I am going to be busy with accounts, 
Joan,” he said. “ I am not in the mood to be 
troubled now.” 

“ Please let me come in, just a few minutes, 
papa — I didn’t come to bother you,” pleaded 
Joan. Something in the big, dark eyes looking 
hungrily out of the pale, dark face smote her 
father painfully — Joan was sometimes very like 
his mother, whose name she bore. 

“ Come in, then,” he said, opening the door 
wider. “ If you came to ask for money, Joan, 
I really can’t give you any ; you must get on with 
your allowance.” 

Joan flushed to her hair. “ I never asked you 
for money in all my life, papa,” she cried. “ And 

to-day . ” She broke off, unduly hurt at this 

complete misapprehension of her motives, for 
how could her father have known what had filled 
her heart and brain since morning? 

“ That is true, daughter ; it is Georgie I had 
in mind — her pockets are all holes. Well, what 
can I do for you, then?” Mr. Darrington’s 
voice was kinder, for he caught the sob in Joan’s. 


36 Nut-Brown Joan 

“ Would you mind telling me — you won’t 
think I’m saucy, or too young — I only want to 
help — I wish I knew ” 

“Joan, stop stammering, and don’t act as if 
I were an ogre!” cried her father. “What do 
you want to know, child?” 

“ Mama told Aunt Deb and Georgie and me 
we were ruined,” Joan burst out in one breath, 
twisting her slender fingers to keep back the tears 
as she spoke. “I don’t care at all, you know, 
papa. It doesn’t matter, except for you. I only 
want to help. I’ve been thinking — thinking — 
and at last I thought I’d better come and beg 
you to tell me just how ruined we were, because 
I couldn’t make plans to help unless I knew that. 
The only thing I could hit on was to send Maggie 
away, and let me do her work.” 

Mr. Darrington’s face had undergone many 
rapid changes of expression as he listened to this 
speech, poured forth breathlessly. 

“ Come here and sit down, my dear ; I’ll tell 
you with pleasure,” he said, as Joan paused to 
gasp. “ I can’t begin to say how surprised I am 
to find myself the possessor of such a sensible, 


The Bright Side 37 

unselfish little woman. How old are you, 
Joan?” 

“ Fourteen,” replied Joan, in a whisper, her 
self-control sorely tried by her father’s praise. 

“ And yet you are practical ! And you don’t 
mind what happens, except for my sake ? Thank 
you, tall little daughter. Don’t you think that 
deserves a kiss ? ” 

Joan flung herself on her father’s shoulder and 
sobbed with all her might. Mr. Darrington pat- 
ted her back somewhat awkwardly, and kissed 
her wet cheek. 

“ There, there, dear ; don’t cry so ! Things are 
not as bad as your mother thought. If they all 
will help, as you want to, there will be only tem- 
porary self-denial,” he said. . 

“ It’s not that, it’s not that,” sobbed Joan. 
“ It’s because I’m so glad, so very, very glad; 
I love being ruined.” 

“Joan, what is the matter?” her father asked, 
beginning to think her delirious. 

“ It’s so lovely to have you say such things to 
me! It’s so lovely to get close to you and feel 
as if you loved me,” Joan whispered. “ It is 


38 Nut-Brown Joan 

such a lonesome house, even though we are a 
crowd; and if being ruined gave me you I’d be 
happy begging at back doors.” 

Mr. Darrington did not answer for a moment. 
When he did it was to kiss Joan as he had never 
kissed her in his life before. 

“ My own little girl,” he said, “ you and I are 
a little alike — more so than I realised. I beg 
your pardon, daughter, that my busy life has 
made you doubt I loved you; you shall not be 
so lonely again, Joan, dear. And, now I’ll tell 
you about my troubles, and I feel sure you can 
be the greatest help, as well as comfort to me. 
I am what is called temporarily embarrassed in my 
business. I made certain investments — you would 
not understand about them — and the stock which 
I was forced to buy in the interest of the business 
has depreciated. I shall be very short of money 
for six months, because I have a good deal tied 
up where it is no present use. But we are not 
ruined; it is certain to come out right by spring. 
The only trouble is that I have an expensive fam- 
ily, Joan. You all require a good deal, even with 
sharp management ; and you know, my dear, your 


39 


The Bright Side 

mother — an invalid, I mean — is not able to give 
her household that management. If we try to 
get through the winter at the present rate of 
living matters will not be right, but will be 
pretty bad by spring. Whereas, if we retrench 
and are careful and self-denying, all pulling to- 
gether, we shall not only be as well off as we are 
now by that time, but I expect to be several 
thousands richer.” 

“ I don’t think that is anything very bad,” said 
Joan childishly, half disappointed in the failure 
of her tragedy. 

“No, but there is that important if in that 
statement,” said her father. “ I said, if we 
retrench. I am very much afraid we shall not 
retrench. I have a friend in Yonkers who will 
keep the horses through the winter, using them, 
of course, and they will be returned to me in the 
spring, when I can afford to keep them. This 
will enable me to dismiss John, but I have not 
been able to get beyond that in planning ways 
to economise. Nothing else is precisely within 
my control.” 

“ But I have thought that we might do without 


40 Nut-Brown Joan 

Maggie or nurse/’ said Joan, feeling very grown 
up. “Hen and Ken are so big Trude and I 
can easily look after them, and I’ll take Maggie’s 
work — Trude will help in that, too. Then 
there’s Aunt Deb; she will do the housekeeping, 
and teach me.” 

“And Georgie? Where does she come in?” 
asked her father. 

“ I don’t know. Maybe she won’t come in, but 
that won’t matter. Perhaps mama and she could 
go visiting while it was disagreeable,” said Joan. 
“Would it do any good to live that way this 
winter? ” 

“It would carry me through — that is all, my 
dear,” said her father. 

“Will you let me try, then?” cried Joan en- 
thusiastically. “ Of course, I’m only a little ' 
over fourteen, but poor girls can do heaps at my 
age. You ought to see Mamie Gallagher, our 
washerwoman’s daughter!” 

“I’ve no doubt I ought,” smiled her father. 
“ Yes, if you will talk over your plans with Aunt 
Deb, and get her assistance, I will take you for 
my chambermaid and nursemaid this winter. 


The Bright Side 41 

But I won’t let you over-do, and I want you to 
go on with your lessons.” 

“Aunt Deb and I have begun lessons every 
morning,” cried Joan rapturously, “and I won’t 
work hard. All the girls do gymnastics; I’m 
sure a little housework can’t be any harder. Be- 
sides, papa, I’d just love to have something to 
do, and be a little useful. You see, I’ve always 
been silly about my looks. I couldn’t help wish- 
ing — I still wish it — that I was pretty like 
Georgie. But Aunt Deb says in England a 
homely girl means a nice, homey girl, and if I’ll 
be that — be homely that way — it won’t matter 
about the other kind of homeliness very much. 
Of course, you know, I can’t help thinking still 
it must matter a good deal — when you’re young, 
anyway — but I’m going to be both kinds of 
homely, as long as I can’t help being one kind.” 

“Then it is a bargain, and a secret between 
us,” said her father. “You talk to Aunt Deb 
and tell me what she advises. In the meantime, 
I thank you more than you know, my dear, for 
your sympathy and love — more even than for 
trying to come to my rescue. It is a discovery 


42 Nut-Brown Joan 

worth the loss of considerable money that I have 
a daughter who is such a true little woman, and 
who loves me devotedly. You said you should 
be glad to be ruined if it brought us together. 
We are not to be ruined, my dear, but we shall 
never be far apart again; we’ve made acquaint- 
ance forever.” And Mr. Darrington held out 
his arms, as he paused by the door before 
opening it. 

Joan nestled into them without a word. She 
dared not speak, because she wanted so very 
much to cry, but her father understood her 
silence, and kissed her tenderly. 

As Joan reached the lower hall she heard the 
sound of voices, and saw Georgie just entering, 
followed by a girl as tall as Joan herself, and 
she knew the new cousin, whom for the time she 
had forgotten, had arrived. 

“This is Joan, my sister,” said Georgie, with 
dignity. “She likes books; I think probably 
you’ll be chums.” 

Joan came forward timidly; there was some- 
thing rather awful about the newcomer’s air, and 
she wore eyeglasses, which seemed — at fifteen — 


The Bright Side 43 

not unlike a fence to keep off young comrades. 
“How do you do, Sophie ?” she said. 

“My name is Sonia, please,” said the tall 
cousin, holding out a hand that was as little like 
a part of herself as if it had been delivered at 
the house in a separate package. “ That is 
Russian for Sophie, and much prettier than that 
ugly, old-fashioned name, don’t you think so? 
Why don’t you make them call you Jeanne?” 

“ Because I would rather be called Joan,” re- 
plied Joan, loyal to her inheritance, in spite of 
not rejoicing in her name, and discreetly refrain- 
ing from saying that to her unaccustomed ears 
Sonia sounded like some sort of a horn. 

“ Won’t you come upstairs to see mama? And 
then we’ll show you our rooms, Georgie’s and 
mine, and the big room we keep for romping.” 

“I never romp,” said Sonia languidly. “I’m 
only interested in reading and real intellectual 
things.” 

“ Do you like Shakespeare ? ” asked Joan, taking 
up her cousin’s bag and the burden of living up 
to such a lofty mind at one and the same mo- 
ment, as she prepared to lead the way upstairs. 


44 Nut-Brown Joan 

“ I used to,” said Sonia. “ I’ve finished Shak- 
speare — I read it last year. Do you like Lord 
Bulwer Lytton?” 

“ I thought Bulwer was his name, not his title.^ 
Joan could not resist the tiny snub. “I like 
‘ Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings/ and I liked 
— no, I don’t believe I read any more. I just 
love Scott and Dickens, don’t you?” cried Joan, 
warming to her subject. 

“Oh, those baby things!” said Sonia scorn- 
fully. “ No, I couldn’t read them — they’re slow ! 
I read all the new novels, and I’m getting ready 
to write one. Maybe you like Louisa Alcott and 
girls’ books?” 

Print cannot convey the superiority in Sonia’s 
tone, but Joan was saved the humiliation of 
acknowledging her devotion to Miss Alcott by 
reaching the door of her mother’s room. 

“ Here’s Sonia — Sophie, you know — mama,” 
she said, and slipped away. The new girl was 
worse than their darkest apprehensions. If this 
were cleverness, Joan thought privately, she 
would rather be homely than clever. 


CHAPTER IV 
JOAN DISCOVERS DARBY 


HE next day dawned bright and 
clear, with such a sharp return of 
cold weather that, if it but held 
two days, there was no possible 
doubt that the skating pond 
would be frozen solidly enough to bear. 

Joan awakened with the exciting sense of some- 
thing happening, with which she had gone to 
sleep, still haunting her. Her evening had been 
spent trying to entertain Sonia, almost unaided, 
while the elders of the household had been in con- 
sultation over the best way to meet the present 
financial emergency. Aunt Deb told Joan when 
bidding her good night that Maggie was to be 
dismissed, and the arrangements she and her 
father had discussed to be carried out. Aunt Deb 
did not add with considerable doubt on her part 
that Joan’s enthusiasm would bear the test of 
45 



46 Nut-Brown Joan 

daily duties, monotonous, and frequently far 
from pleasant. 

Georgie found Sonia rather worse at dinner 
than before, so she had retired from her presence 
immediately the meal was over, following her 
consistent principle of self-preservation — from 
anything unpleasant. Guy had gallantly come to 
Joan’s rescue, and, as he himself expressed it, 
“ taken a whack ” at his cousin, but she so soon 
overwhelmed him with her manifest scorn of a 
boy of her own age that he had retired from the 
field more promptly than he had entered it, while 
Dick and Trude, who also tried being polite to 
the stranger, were apparently invisible and in- 
audible at her altitude. So Joan went to bed 
somewhat exhausted by the burden left her to 
bear alone, but the clear, frosty morning banished 
the oppression of Sonia from her mind. It left 
only enough of it to make Joan slip through a 
side door as soon as breakfast was over and speed 
off to the other side of town to find her three girl 
friends, and tell them the great news that she was 
to become a pillar of domestic economy, and that 


Joan Discovers Darby 47 

she had a dreadfully pompous and affected girl 
cousin come to spend the winter. 

It took three hours to tell this, with due allow- 
ance for side issues in the conversation, and it 
was nearly lunch time before Joan set out for 
home. Her three friends accompanied her part 
way, and although it took her somewhat out of her 
course she continued her walk by a street which 
led past the pond, because she wanted to see if the 
cold weather was doing its work properly and 
getting the ice ready. 

A pleasant road skirted the pond — the favourite 
Cornleigh drive in summer, when its trees were 
in leaf ; still pretty, though the boughs were bare, 
Joan followed its curves, rejoicing in the crust of 
ice already spread over the surface of the little 
sheet of water. There was one stretch where the 
road ran straight and level, too tempting to be 
walked soberly, and Joan hopped, skipped and 
jumped down its length. Suddenly a sight met 
her eyes which brought her up standing, and 
then sent her on her way with the speed of the 
wind. A boy, apparently about fifteen, well 


48 Nut-Brown Joan 

dressed, but unmistakably to Joan’s quick mind a 
fiend in human form, stood on the brink of the 
pond, holding up by the nape of its forlorn little 
neck a tiny grey kitten. 

It was dripping, but the boy prodded the ice 
vindictively with a pole he carried, and there was 
no doubt, Joan thought, he was preparing a hole 
into which to thrust the poor shivering, helpless 
thing. 

Chivalry was as much Joan’s birthright as if 
she had been a boy, or a knight of old, and pas- 
sionate love for animals almost a mania with her. 
From her earliest days she had been getting into 
scrapes in their service, and to her the sight of 
one abused was a signal to go to its rescue, re- 
gardless of consequences, circumstances, or even 
danger. With a cry of inarticulate wrath she 
now started down the road, her long, dark hair 
streaming behind her, her eyes flashing rage and 
defiance, and her breath short, less from running 
than from excitement. When Joan chose to put 
forth the power of her unusual length of limb she 
could get over the ground like a racer, and she 
bore down on the surprised boy in a very few mo- 


49 


Joan Discovers Darby 

ments. He turned, staring in amazement at the 
sound and sight of this Brunhilde-like girl, who 
came breathing fire and vengeance in defence of 
the weak. 

“ Give me that kitten ! ” she cried. “ Give it 
to me this instant! How can you be so cruel? 
How would like to be drowned by a giant? 
You’re a giant to a kitten, and you’re a monster 
and an ogre besides ! Give me the kitten, I say.” 

The boy handed the dripping little creature to 
Joan; it crawled at once under her jacket, which 
she opened to receive it, shivering and uttering 
such faint, plaintive mews that her wrath burst 
forth afresh. 

“ I can’t imagine what you’re made of — not 
that I want to ! ” she cried. “ Some day you may 
be sick and cold and poor — if it wasn’t wicked 
I’d hope you would ! I think it is the very worst 
thing in the world to be cruel to a little creature 
that can’t help itself. Boys are horrid ! They’re 
nearly all cruel, and they like to think they’re 
brave and fine ! I call you a coward — that’s all ; 
just a coward! Why don’t you abuse a big boy 
like yourself? Because you’re afraid you might 


50 


Nut-Brown Joan 

get hurt — that’s why! Do you suppose anyone 
can’t see that ? But the kitten can only suffer, and 
can’t hit back! And it’s so loving too — they’re 
all grateful — all animals — if they’re treated half 
way decently! I should think you’d be just about 
ready to die of sorrow and shame to have abused 
a thing that’s all love and trust in you ! But no ! 
Instead of feeling the least wee bit of pity for it, 
or shame at having already half killed it, you were 
actually prodding a hole in the ice when I saw you, 
to drown it more ! But you won’t drown it. I’d 
never give it up to you, not if you cut me into 
inch pieces ! How, how I hate, hate cruelty ! You 
shall never abuse this kitten again, as sure as my 
name is Joan Darrington.” 

The boy bowed ironically at these words, pre- 
tending to take them as an introduction; he 
glanced as he did so at the face, flushed with 
wrath and the effort of eloquent abuse of him. 

“ Happy to meet you, Miss Joan Darrington,” 
he said. “ Your sentiments do you honour, though 
it might be just as well to find out what you’re 
talking about before you lay a fellow out flat. I 
don’t mind, but some might. I agree with all 


5i 


Joan Discovers Darby 

you’ve said. I suppose appearances were against 
me, but the fact is I was trying to look after that 
kitten myself.” 

“ H’m! ” remarked Joan, her nose in the air. 

“ Truth, m’am, though you don’t believe it,” as- 
serted the bey. 

Joan looked at him, and saw for the first time 
that he was handsome, with a frank, honest face 
and truthful eyes, which would twinkle in spite of 
his effort to be grave and polite. 

“ I came along here, sauntering — sauntering 
rather more slowly than you were when you 
came down on me just now — and I found a big, 
tough fellow watching this kitten struggling in 
the cold water, down in that hole in the ice you 
see there,” said the boy. “ It made me pretty 
mad — as mad as you were, which is why I don’t 
mind your explosion. I fished the kitten out by 
lying down on the bank here ” 

“ And what did the rough do ? ” interrupted 
Joan, forgetting her anger. “ How did he let 
you rescue it without interference?” 

“ He didn’t,” replied her new acquaintance, 
reddening. “ He kicked me while I fished it out, 


52 


Nut-Brown Joan 

and I had to let him, because if I waited to polish 
him off first the kitten would have been drowned, 
or frozen stiff.” 

“ That was dreadful! ” cried Joan, by this time 
in complete sympathy, while she rubbed the ob- 
ject of this assorted heroism under her jacket. 
“ What did you do then ? ” 

“ Well, I had to set the kitten on the bank and 
ask it to excuse me, even though it was cold, while 
I did him up ” began the boy. 

“ And did you? ” cried Joan eagerly. 

“ Then I did do him up, yes,” said the boy, with 
a smile of pure joy. “ He was big, but I had 
been taught some points. He went home rather 
hastily.” 

“That was lovely!” sighed Joan, in perfect 
content. Then she added, with a return of her 
first misgiving : “ But when I saw you, you were 
prodding the ice, and holding up the kitten as if 
you meant to drop it in — why was that? ” 

“ That, Miss Lawyer, was because I forgot the 
poor little thing, I’m afraid, and was still so mad 
I had to put a hole in something. That's the end 
of my story ; are you satisfied ? ” 


Joan Discovers Darby 53 

“ Yes, and I beg your pardon,” said Joan. 
“ I’m sorry I scolded you so, but how could I 
know ? ” 

“ You couldn’t,” said the boy promptly. “ I 
don’t mind a tongue lashing — but, say, you do 
fly into inch pieces, don’t you? It must be pretty 
hard on you to feel that way, and be a girl who 
can’t use anything but her tongue. I thumped 
my fellow.” 

Joan laughed. “ To tell the truth, I have used 
my hands too when I’ve found boys torturing ani- 
mals,” she said. “ I don’t know what I might have 
done if you hadn’t given up the kitten when I 
told you to. I’m sorry I said such things, but I’m 
more glad you’re not what I thought; you must 
like animals as much as I do.” 

“As much as I can, anyhow,” said the boy. 
“ I’m always fighting for them too. Which way 
are you going ? Don’t you think we ought to take 
that kitten where it can get warm and dry and 
have some warm milk, Miss Joan of Arc? Did 
they name you Joan because they knew you were 
going to turn out a sort of knight ? ” 

“ I’m named for my grandmother,” laughed 


54 


Nut-Brown Joan 

Joan. “ Of course we ought to take the kitten 
home. I’m going to Vernon Street, where I live. 
Will you come, or do you want the kitten ? ” 

“ No ; you may have it. I’m a stranger in town ; 
we moved here only last week,” said the boy, as 
they walked on. “ My name is Darley Danforth, 
and I haven’t a friend here ; I haven’t a brother or 
a sister, either, except a half sister, who is married, 
and away. It’s rather lonely.” 

“ Pooh ! That doesn’t make any difference,” 
said Joan. “ I am one of a lot — ‘ we are seven ’ — 
but it’s lonely at our house too. We like animals, 
and you look as if we might like the same things 
in other ways; come and see me, and maybe we 
can be friends — if Guy doesn’t take you,” she 
added doubtfully. 

“ Now, I call that kind!” said Darley grate- 
fully. “You’re not much like most girls — you 
hit out from the shoulder, yet you’re girlish too. 
I guess we could be friends, and I’ll be glad to 
come and see you, if you mean it. Who’s Guy ? ” 
Joan launched forth into a description of her 
family which lasted to her own gate, at which 
point Darley bade her good-bye, promising to 


Joan Discovers Darby 55 

come soon to see her and learn how their protege 
was coming on. 

The kitten proved to be a pure Maltese, and, 
after a few days of weakness slept off the evil 
effects of its plunge and came out resplendent in 
a glossy coat and perfect beauty of form. 

Joan was delighted with her prize, and showed 
it proudly to Darley on the occasion of his first 
visit to her, which did not take place for a week, 
for the boy was shy, and, when the stimulus of 
Joan’s presence was removed, found it took cour- 
age to go deliberately to call on a strange girl. 

There was not much suggestion of a call in his 
reception, however. He found Joan in her own 
home the same Joan she had been under less con- 
ventional circumstances, with the happy exception 
of her indignation, so his shyness dropped off in 
the cordial greeting she gave him. “ The bone 
of contention,” as Darley called the kitten, not in 
the least bony, but round, and gay in a new red 
ribbon, was brought forth, and his antics broke 
the ice between them, as his broken ice had intro- 
duced them. 

“ What will you name him ? ” asked Darley. 


56 Nut-Brown Joan 

“ How would Enoch Arden do — he came back 
from drowning, you know.” 

“ No, indeed. He’s got to be Bandersnatch, be- 
cause he’s the quickest thing I ever saw, and it’s a 
case of ‘ you might as well try to catch a Bander- 
snatch ’ — you remember ? He’ll he Ban, for 
short,” said Joan, wondering how Darley stood 
on the “ Alice ” question. 

To her delight her new friend laughed, with 
that gleam in his eye by which true lovers of 
“ Alice ” know one another. 

“ That’s all right! ” cried Darley. “No Ban- 
dersnatch could be quicker, nor more frumious 
than he is.” 

“Yes, but still he’s more like a monkey than 
a kitten. You never saw anything like the mon- 
key tricks he does. Gets upon the bookcases, and 
rocks the pictures on the wall by putting one paw 
on the front, and one behind the frame. And 
stands on his hind legs and pats the glass on the 
pictures as fast as he can pat it, if we don’t feed 
him the minute he is hungry. And sits up straight, 
and takes things in his paws to play with — steals 
them, you know — or feeds himself, sitting up 


57 


Joan Discovers Darby 

straight, like a monkey. Fve tried to get monkey 
into his name somehow, but I can’t think of a 
word,” said Joan, wrinkling her brow. 

Darley considered a moment, then he said: 
“ Ban answers for that, too — Bandarlog, you 
know; the monkey people in the Jungle Book.” 

Joan clapped her hands. “ Bandersnatch-Ban- 
darlog, and Ban-Ban for short ! The very thing ! 
You’ve saved him and named him, and you shall 
be considered his godfather.” 

“We did both together,” said Darley, well 
pleased with her pleasure. And from that mo- 
ment Joan and he were truly friends. 

So rapid was Darley’s progress in Joan’s favour 
that she took him that very first afternoon to see 
her retreat, the arbor vitae bower, and told him 
of her aspirations to be useful, a real “homely 
girl,” in Aunt Deb’s sense. An instinctive desire 
not to seem to ask for a contradiction made her 
refrain from calling attention to the fact that she 
was already a homely girl, in the other sense. 

They came slowly back across the lawn, for 
Darley was telling Joan of his hopes, and how he 
fully intended going West as soon as he was old 


58 Nut-Brown Joan 

enough, there to lead the free, outdoor life of a 
civil engineer. 

“I’ve been rather tied up, so far,” he said. 
“ Mother wants me to study law, but she says I 
shall do what I like best when I’m old enough to 
choose, even if it were going to sea, though that 
would nearly kill her. My mother and I are 
chums,” Darley said. 

“ That’s lovely,” sighed Joan. “ Mama is too 
delicate to be a chum ; papa and I are very much 
alike, and we’re getting acquainted. I think, 
maybe, we might be chums some day. There 
goes my sister Georgie.” 

“ My ! Isn’t she pretty ! ” exclaimed Darley. 

“Yes,” said Joan, with another sigh. “It’s 
very nice to be so pretty, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, but I think a girl you like is sure to be 
pretty,” said Darley, with profound insight, and 
a look at Joan that was very cheering to a girl 
that had long minded being thin, tall, and brown. 
And with this speech they parted. 

“Who’s your new friend, J. ?” asked Guy as 
she entered. 

“ Darley Danforth ; he’s the nicest boy ! I told 


59 


Joan Discovers Darby 

you about him — the one who saved Ban-Ban,” 
said Joan, throwing her hat and jacket down in 
the indiscriminate heap to which she was addicted, 
and which was one of the reasons why Aunt Deb 
feared her as a substitute for Maggie. 

“We’re going to have fine times; we’re real 
friends already.” 

“ Darley ! ” laughed Guy. “ What’s the matter 
with Darby — Darby and Joan, you know.” 

And “ Darby ” the new boy remained to the end 
of the chapter. 


CHAPTER V 
BAD BEGINNINGS 


AGGIE was gone and Delia, the 
cook, was going. She had re- 
ceived so much kindness during 
the year that she had graced the 
Darrington home, and Mr. Dar- 
rington had been so energetic in starting her boy 
well in life — for she was what Henley called “ a 
widowless woman ” — that Aunt Deb ventured to 
propose to her that she serve in the dining-room 
and help with the sweeping in return for being 
relieved of several of her present duties. Miss 
Chisholm explained that it was an arrangement 
for the winter only, and that during this time 
there was to be no entertaining, only the simplest 
family life and easy cooking. But Madam Delia 
rejected the proposition with the indignation it 
deserved. “ Would she wait on the table? She’d 
like to be seein’ herself at it ! She was that sorry 



Bad Beginnings 61 

for the family, if they was rejuiced in circum- 
stances, but she’d be afther lookin’ out for her own 
intherests. She’d never lived wid anny but the 
furst fam’lies, an’ though she’d always found’um 
nice folks to deal wid, she’d have to be goin’ whin 
her month wuz up — she wasn’t wan to be stayin’ 
where she’d be the only hellup, not if ’twas for 
only the winther — though as to that, to be sure, 
you couldn’t be certain.” 

So she was going, and Aunt Deb realised that 
evil days were before them. 

But Joan was enthusiastically delighted. She 
immediately — much as she detested sewing — • 
began making for herself three gigantic gingham 
aprons, full enough to go all around her slender 
form and allow generously for expansion, and 
also a pair of dusting caps, one bright red, the 
other pink. 

“ We can do all the work ourselves, Auntie Deb 
dear,” Joan cried triumphantly. “ I can cook 
if you will only teach me a little bit, and then we 
shall save Delia’s wages as well as nurse’s and 
Maggie’s, and all they waste — which you say is 
more than the wages.” 


62 


Nut-Brown Joan 

But Aunt Deb shook her experienced head. 
“ Not at all, my dear,” she said firmly. “ I shall 
get in a cook at once. I know quite well what 
cooking means, not to mention clearing up after- 
wards.” 

Aunt Deborah had to learn anew, however, 
that the blessings of life are not always to be had 
for the asking — not even cooks. The “ ladies ” 
who maintained themselves in Cornleigh by going 
out to service to “women” — for that was their 
relative point of view of the employed and em- 
ployer — flouted Aunt Deb when she interviewed 
them and revealed the fact that they were ex- 
pected to be the only servant in a family of eleven, 
no matter how much that family was willing to 
help them. In vain Aunt Deb dangled, so to speak, 
the weekly laundress before their eyes. Servants 
were mistresses of all situations in a town like 
Cornleigh, and none would go to the curtailed 
Darrington household save one who was guar- 
anteed to get tipsy every Saturday night, and 
another who wanted to bring with her her two 
children, aged, respectively, three years and nine- 
teen months. 


Bad Beginnings 63 

At the end of Delia’s week of warning Aunt 
Deb found herself at the head of a domestic 
economy without a domestic, and Joan chortled 
that events had forced her unbelieving aunt into 
trying her young niece’s powers, in which Joan 
herself felt perfect confidence. 

“We have got to do all our own cooking,” she 
cried gleefully, coming into Sonia’s room, where 
the rest of the younger Darringtons were assem- 
bled. Delia had just departed, and the breakfast 
on the following morning was to be the first essay 
of independence. “ Auntie has taught me to boil 
potatoes and broil a steak decently — I shall help 
her with the solid things. What will you do, 
Georgie ? ” 

“ I’ll make desserts — sometimes,” said Georgie 
dubiously. “I wouldn’t mind making cold des- 
serts once in a while, but I wouldn’t fuss over a 
hot stove for anything! It would simply ruin 
one’s complexion.” 

“ Do you suppose cold desserts are made raw, 
silly ? ” demanded Sonia scornfully. “ Don’t you 
know you have to cook them and cool them? 
Your aunt will find a cook soon, of course. I’ll 


64 Nut-Brown Joan 

help some in the meantime — set the table, and 
arrange the salts, and do those things — if it isn't 
too long." 

“ Thanks," said Joan, with an effort. She felt 
that they could not demand assistance of a guest, 
but she did feel that a guest who had come for a 
whole winter, and because she needed a home, 
might strain a point to lend a hand — not merely a 
little finger, to speak metaphorically. 

“ Aunt Deb has said that we may get the first 
dinner all alone," Joan continued, brightening. 
“ She thinks we ought to make it very, very 
simple, and buy dessert; but I want it nice. I 
thought we might each say what we would 
make." 

“ Why don’t you get Darby around ? " sug- 
gested Guy. 

“ I did ask him yesterday to come," said Joan 
promptly. “ He said he’d like to help. He has 
beaten mayonnaise sauce for his mother, and he 
knows how it’s made, so I thought we’d have 
salad, for one thing." 

“I’ll make oyster stew — I can do that," said 
Sonia. 


Bad Beginnings 65 

“ I will try that rule for sponge cake, and whip 
cream to eat on it, with preserved strawberries 
whipped into the cream. It was awfully good at 
Mabel Garland’s luncheon,” said Georgie. 

“I ought to make silly-bubs,” said Guy. “I 
don’t know what they are, but they sound ap- 
propriate.” 

Joan groaned at the pun, while Dick said 
solemnly : “ That’s nothing to eat ; that’s some- 

thing to do with an argument, and it’s something 
the Pope writes besides.” 

“What an extraordinary child!” remarked 
Sonia, putting on her eyeglasses to regard Dick 
with what she fondly believed was a mature air, 
and which made Joan ache to box her ears. 

“ He means a syllabus ! ” shouted Guy, going 
off into an agony of laughter. 

Darley — now Darby — appeared early in the 
afternoon of the following day. Not too early, 
however, to find a perturbed kitchenful of young 
people struggling with the fundamental problem 
of food. 

Joan had evaded, rather than rejected, Aunt 
Deb’s advice to make their first dinner a simple 


66 


Nut-Brown Joan 

one, and had ordered what now struck her as an 
embarrassing bill of fare. 

A pair of chickens meekly extended imploring 
wings and drumsticks from the table, turning 
aside their headless necks with a despair of being 
properly stuffed, which Joan feared was well 
founded. That young woman, enveloped in one 
of her trio of big aprons, was stirring the chicken 
dressing in a yellow bowl. Her cheeks were 
flushed, her eyes bright, her hair parted straight 
on one side, like a boy’s — a trick it had when 
she rumpled it up, as she always did when 
excited. 

Georgie, looking very pretty in a ruffled white 
apron, was beating eggs. Her air suggested 
indifference to the result, and it was evident that 
the occasion was not the tragic one to her that it 
was to Joan. Sonia was straining oysters into a 
bowl. Her eyeglasses were at their post on her 
uptilted nose, and Darby heard her say — evidently 
in reply to Joan: “ No, I don’t remember much 
about Dora’s oysters in David Copperfield; I 
don’t care for Dickens — he’s too silly. You 
won’t like him either when you’re older.” 


Bad Beginnings 67 

Guy sat on the window sill making a nuisance 
of himself generally, and Dick and Trude hung 
around the doorway, to which point it was plain 
they had been banished, while Hen and Ken 
peered forth wistfully from the upper step of 
the stairs leading cellarward. Joan hailed Darby 
with a wave of her left hand, and a hearty: 
“ Hello, Darby!” 

Then she discovered that she held the pepper 
box in that hand, and groaned as she saw the top 
of her chicken dressing black from her heedless 
salute. 

“ For goodness’ sake hand me a teaspoon, 
Trude,” she cried. “ Or a knife would be better ; 
I’ve got to scrape off this pepper. Sit down a 
jiffy, Darby; I’ll get you the eggs and things for 
mayonnaise in a minute.” 

“ Is that oven hot, Joan?” asked Georgie, with 
a winning smile toward Darby. She scorned 
boys of his age, yet craved admiration from 
everybody, of whatever age, with whom she came 
in contact. 

“ It ought to be,” Joan began, but Guy inter- 
rupted her. “ It is,” he said. “ I opened the door 


68 


Nut-Brown Joan 

a while ago, and it was cool, so I jammed a lot of 
wood and coal into the range, and she’s hissing.” 

“She” certainly was “hissing”; Joan ex- 
claimed impatiently over the general uselessness 
of boys, and set off one of the top lids. “ How 
do you expect to roast chickens in such a hot 
oven? ” she cried. 

“ I don’t ; I don’t expect to roast chickens in 
any sort of oven, ever, and I don’t expect to be 
able to eat those you roast, Miss Joan,” drawled 
Guy provokingly. 

“ My cake is ready,” said Georgie, holding up 
a pan full of an attractive golden mixture. “ It 
has to go right in, Joan, hot oven or not, because 
the book says it mustn’t stand, or the eggs will 
fall — there’s no baking powder in it.” 

“ Humpty-Dumpty fell — he was an egg. Was 
that because they put him on a wall instead of an 
oven?” asked Dick unexpectedly from the door- 
way. 

Joan was too busy to heed her sister. She was 
tucking the last crumb of dressing into the last of 
the pair of chickens. “ Help me sew these up, 
Darby,” she ordered. 


Bad Beginnings 69 

Darby obeyed meekly, holding the rounded, 
resigned birds with both hands while Joan drew 
her big needle in and out through the skin. 

“Aunt Deb showed me how to do that,” she 
said, falling back to survey her work with pardon- 
able pride. “Now I dab bits of butter all over 
them, and they’re ready for the oven.” 

“You can’t open that oven door while the 
cake’s rising,” cried Georgie. 

“Well, and how long must I wait? Chickens 
are more consequence than cake,” said Joan. 

“ It says : Bake in a quick oven twenty 
minutes,” said Georgie. “ Ten minutes more.” 

“ The oven’s quick, if that’s all,” laughed Joan. 
She never stayed cross long. “Quicker than a 
bandersnatch — even this Bandersnatch,” she 
added, making a swoop at the Maltese kitten who 
was scooping up with his paw a small potato out 
of the potato basket, intending to use it as a ball 
around the kitchen — this being his favourite toy. 
“All right; I’ll wait, Georgie. Darby, what do 
you want for the sauce?” 

“Oil, vinegar, lemon, sugar, salt, red pepper, 
mustard,” responded Darby promptly. 


70 


Nut-Brown Joan 

“And eggs. And an apron,” supplemented 
Joan. “ I’ll get them.” 

She returned from the cool pantry bringing 
Darby’s ingredients, and proceeded to tie him up 
in one of her gigantic aprons. 

Darby immediately broke two eggs into the 
soup plate Joan handed him, and began putting 
in the dry condiments. 

A wail from Georgie startled the cooks, and 
they all gathered around the oven door before 
which a pretty, flushed, and tearful face was 
raised toward them. 

“ Look at that ! ” cried Georgie tragically, and 
they looked. Instead of the heaped up golden 
cake they expected to see there was a molten, 
yellow mass of sugary, thick liquid, only pre- 
vented by the pan from running all over the 
oven. 

“What on earth ails it?” demanded Sonia. 
The rest were too shocked to speak. 

“I forgot the flour,” moaned Georgie. 

A shout arose from her audience. Joan was 
the first to check herself, pitying her sister’s mor- 
tification. “Never mind, Georgie; Dick will get 


Bad Beginnings 71 

us some lady’s fingers to eat with the cream,” she 
said. “ Let’s get it out, and the chickens in, and 
I must put in some potatoes to bake, if Ban-Ban 
will spare me one — sweet ones, Ban, if you 
please.” 

“And I must put on these oysters at once, or 
the soup won’t be ready,” said Sonia, with an 
important air. “ I can’t imagine, Georgie, how 
you could forget flour!” 

“ I believe oysters should cook a very little 
while,” remarked Joan, sympathising with the 
wrath in Georgie’s pettish face at this remark. 
“ I think they get hard if you boil them long.” 

“ Have you ever made oyster stew ? ” inquired 
Sonia haughtily, and added, as Joan shook her 
head : “ I know precisely how it should be 

done.” And Joan felt crushed into silence. 

“There’s something mighty queer about your 
oil, Joan,” said Darby at this point. He had not 
ventured to leave his work when the others gath- 
ered around the range, but had faithfully sat still, 
putting the oil, drop by drop, into his mayonnaise 
according to orthodox methods. 

“What’s wrong?” asked Joan, wrinkling her 


72 


Nut-Brown Joan 

brow. “ Why,” she added, coming over to look, 
“it’s all separate and stringy — what is it?” 

“ The oil must be old,” said Darby. 

“ We don’t use old olive oil in this house,” said 
Guy. “ There’s some old castor oil upstairs they 
gave me some time ago. I didn’t take it, and I 
don’t care for it — you may have it, if it will be 
of any use to you.” 

“It can’t be the oil ” Joan was begin- 

ning, when Darby interrupted her with a tragic 
whoop. 

“Great zoology! I know! I used the whole 
egg, white and all! I ought to have taken only 
the yolk.” 

“Is it spoiled?” asked Trude sadly; she espe- 
cially cared for salad dressing. 

“ I’m afraid it is. Did you ever see such a 
dummkopf?” demanded Darby, looking rue- 
fully into his bowl. “ It doesn’t look much like 
salad dressing.” 

“ Looks as though it would be dandy hair 
dressing,” said Guy, surveying the disconnected 
mass with mock solicitude. “ Maybe it would be 
better to throw it away, though.” 


Bad Beginnings 73 

“ May I stay to dinner just the same? ” asked 
Darby contritely. 

“ Oh, my goodness, maybe there won’t be any 
dinner!” cried Joan, in a strained voice. She 
was on her knees before the oven whence issued 
the odour of burning. 

“ I forgot to baste these beasts, and they’ve 
burned a little on the top.” 

Nobody ventured to offer consolation — Joan’s 
face was too tragic. Sonia stirred her oysters 
with a superior air, and Dick and Trude went 
into the dining-room to lay the table. Three 
quarters of another thrilling hour passed. 

Then Mr. Darrington came to the head of the 
stairs. “ Dinner is half an hour late,” he called. 
“ May I ask if there is hope for a starving man? ” 

“Yes, papa, I don’t know as there’ll be much 
else, though,” Joan called back. “ Wait fifteen 
minutes more, if you can, please.” 

In thirteen minutes, however, she rang the bell. 
The first course was Sonia’s oysters. Bullets 
would have retired dented from a collision with 
them. Joan with much difficulty restrained her- 
self from even looking: “ I told you so! ” They 


74 Nut-Brown Joan 

had been boiled out of all semblance of their ten- 
der, juicy selves, and the full soup plates were 
borne away by patient Trude. 

Joan’s chickens came next, and sent the colour 
rushing to her very hair. She had not noticed 
until they were on the platter that their legs and 
wings stuck out wildly in all directions — she had 
forgotten the skewers. The breasts were black- 
ened and seared, but the flesh revealed under the 
knife a pinkness equal to the fowls Bella Wilfer 
roasted. The “ quick oven ” had done its work ; 
the chickens were burnt, yet raw. 

Tears of angry mortification stood in Joan’s 
eyes, tears which the mealy mashed potatoes and 
the perfectly prepared peas could not dry. It was 
so trying! When she wanted to prove to her 
father how competent she was, and to Darby what 
a clever friend he had ! But Darby proved himself 
true blue. At the risk of “ cholera infantum,” 
as Guy said afterward, he ate those underdone 
fowls, insisting that they were the most delicious 
of birds, and only a trifle rare. Joan vowed in 
her heart — while preventing him from feeding 
bits to Ban-Ban, lest he have fits — that if ever she 


Bad Beginnings 75 

could requite Darby for his loyalty she would do 
it at all costs. 

There was but the recollection of the oysters, 
mayonnaise and sponge cake to sustain Joan 
through this trying dinner. 

But the whipped cream was good, and Dick 
had fetched lady’s fingers from the reliable baker, 
and, thanks to Aunt Deb, Joan’s coffee was per- 
fection. 

Joan cheered up a little as her father asked for 
a second cup, and brought him the crackers and 
cheese with a private pat of mutual consolation, 
and the dismal meal came to a conclusion in com- 
parative comfort. 

When they were all washing the dishes and had 
reached a state of mind in which they were able 
to see the funny side of their failures, Aunt Deb 
said : “ I found an old coloured woman who is 

willing to come to us, because, she says, she * has 
de misery so bad ’ that she cannot take 4 a first 
class place.’ I am told she is an excellent cook — 
of course she cannot do much else. Are you 
sorry to have her come ? ” she added, with a sly 
glance at Joan. 


76 Nut-Brown Joan 

“ Oh, dear me, I guess I’m not ! ” cried Joan, 
with such fervour that they all laughed. 

“Joan ate humble pie for dinner,” said Aunt 
Deb. “ It is more wholesome than sponge cake, 
Georgie, and more strengthening than oysters, 
Sonia.” 


CHAPTER VI 

THE FOUNDING OF AN ORDER 


IN’T I glad we’re out of the wil- 
derness, out of the wilderness, out 
of the wilderness,’ ” sang Joan as 
she prepared breakfast on the fol- 
lowing morning. She was so 
thoroughly nourished on “ humble pie ” that the 
thought of its being the last day without a cook 
filled her with joy. 

But once more hope proved illusive, and another 
week of chaos had to be borne. The old woman 
whom Aunt Deb had engaged sent word that her 
“ misery was too keen ” to allow her to work for 
a few days, and the bereft household struggled on 
alone. 

In spite of her heroic resolves Joan found her- 
self wearying in well-doing, and frequently for- 
getting and dropping back into the old habits of 
her dawdling days. 



77 


78 Nut-Brown Joan 

It was so very hard to dust steadily, with no 
lapses, when the room was full of alluring books. 
Joan was constantly tumbling into a convenient 
chair “ just for a minute ” while she followed the 
fortunes of Brenda and Minna Yorke, or the still 
more engrossing sorrows of Queen Mary in “ The 
Abbot,” or of poor Amy Robsart in “ Kenil- 
worth.” 

Joan loved Sir Walter with all her romantic 
heart. During these stolen visits to paradise 
her duster dangled in her left hand quite for- 
gotten, except by Ban-Ban, whose twitches of 
it as he stood on his hind legs to reach it fre- 
quently recalled his conscience-stricken mistress 
to her duty. 

Sometimes, indeed, there was no duster in the 
case. There were hours when Joan deliberately 
gave herself up to pleasure, mixed herself a glass 
of lemonade, duly provided with a straw and an 
accompanying pile of crackers, and, propping her 
elbows on the table, her glass before her and her 
book between the elbows, munched, and sipped, 
and read in that blissful oblivion to real life with 
its burdens possible only to her age But on the 


The Founding of an Order 79 

whole the little girl acquitted herself of her obli- 
gations with a fidelity remarkable in one to whom 
they were so new, and who had lost the glamour 
of illusion and enthusiasm which carried her 
through at the beginning. 

“ I really think Joan is thinner than ever,” said 
Mrs. Darrington one morning at the breakfast, 
for which she now made the effort to arise. Her 
second daughter had just brought in the platter- 
ful of steaming eggs which she had scrambled to 
precisely the right moment of mingled softness 
and hardness. 

“ She’s working too hard, I suspect,” said her 
father, looking up with a smile for Joan that 
warmed her heart in a way to compensate for 
the scorching her face had been getting over the 
range. “Come here, Joan, daughter; let me see 
that right hand of yours. Ah, I thought so! Just 
look at this mama, Aunt Deb! We must get 
someone here by force, if necessary, to cook for 
us. How did you get such a burn, Brown 
Lassie? ” 

“ It was the steam from the teakettle when I 
made the coffee, papa,” said Joan, trying to draw 


8o 


Nut-Brown Joan 

the burned wrist up into her sleeve. “ It hurt at 
first, but it doesn’t hurt now.” 

“ You must be careful, dear. I don’t want you 
burned at the stake, like your great namesake,” 
said Mr. Darrington, stroking the arm above its 
wound before he let it go. 

“ The worst of that was that the king she 
loved and worked for was so ungrateful. I 
wouldn’t mind martyrdom so much if it was for 
someone who loved me,” whispered Joan kissing 
the father of whom she had lost all fear, and 
whose new understanding of her was her consola- 
tion when matters went crooked. 

Joan felt that she needed consolation, if only 
for the presence of Sonia in the house, for Sonia 
was distinctly a trial. 

“ I cannot like her,” said Joan almost tearfully 
to Georgie and Guy as they left the dining-room 
that morning. “ She is so silly, and so toploftical. 
I don’t know why, but it puts me in mind of 
‘ Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea/ 
when I say ‘ Sonia ’ — I hate to say it.” 

“ Maybe that’s because she’s always blowing 
her own horn,” said Guy. “ Or maybe it’s because 


The Founding of an Order 81 

Sonia sounds like sonorous. I don’t blame you 
for getting pretty sick of her ; I’d die if I had to 
have her around all the time as you girls do. 
She’s certainly a bird!” 

“I wish she’d let us call her Sophie,” sighed 
Joan. 

“ Suggests sitting on her ? ” hinted Guy. 

“ She acts like Vassar and Bryn Mawr and 
Smith and Wellesley colleges melted down and 
skimmed off. I hate bookish girls,” said Georgie 
spitefully. 

“ I don’t call her bookish — not really,” said 
Joan, justly regarding this as a personal remark. 
“ Oh, well ; what’s the use ? She’s here, and has to 
stay, I suppose. Darby and I are going to begin 
a secret society this afternoon, will you both 
join?” 

“ Who else ? ” asked Georgie doubtfully. 

“ Dick and Trude, and I suppose Sonia, if she 
wants to,” replied Joan, sighing. 

“ I don’t mind,” said Guy. “ You spoke of this 
long ago, before you knew Darby, J. What’s 
the secret to be ? ” 

“ I can’t tell; if you join you’ll see, but we 


82 Nut-Brown Joan 

can’t tell the secret except to members,” said 
Joan. 

“All right; that’s fair, and I’m yours,” said 
Guy. 

“ I’ll try it, but I’m sure it will turn out some- 
thing babyish and silly,” said Georgie. 

“ Here’s Sonia,” said Joan, crushing back the 
sharp retort she longed to make her sister. 
“ We’re going to start a secret society — Georgie, 
Guy, Darby, Dick and Trude, and myself, Sonia. 
We shall begin this afternoon; will you join?” 
Joan added, as the thorn in her flesh entered, 
looking wisely through the eyeglasses which Joan 
always suspected of being plain window glass, 
and worse than unnecessary. 

“ Dear me, I don’t know. I am reading so- 
ciology and psychology, and I meant to finish 
them this afternoon,” drawled Sonia. 

Joan gasped, but Guy inquired with a meek 
and wholly stupid look: “Is sociology etiquette? 
I know psychology is the science of fishes.” 

“It has nothing to do with fish,” said Sonia 
sharply. “ But sociology is society things, in a 
way.” 


The Founding of an Order 83 

“ How can you be so learned ? ” asked Guy, 
with mock awe. 

“ I always loved study,” said Sonia easily. 
“Fm reading ‘The Marble Faun/ and ‘The 
Three Musketeers/ and ‘ Middlemarch/ and then 
I’m reading Rosa Nouchette Carey, when I get 
too tired.” 

“All at once?” cried Joan. 

Sonia gave her a pitying look. “That’s the 
best way to read — just keep a lot of things going 
to change off on and rest your mind,” she said. 

“The secret society may rest it,” said Joan, 
rallying. “ Will you join or not? ” 

“I guess so,” sighed Sonia, with the air of 
immolating herself to the public weal. When 
the hour for the meeting arrived Darby and Joan 
were prompt at the spot designated, — the summer- 
house, — Dick and Trude scarcely less so, but the 
three older ones dallied, and at last Darby and 
Joan had to come to the mortifying conclusion 
that they were forgotten or slighted. Georgie 
had completely forgotten her appointment, Guy, 
with whom lessons and school affairs were going 
badly of late, was detained for an unpleasant 


84 Nut-Brown Joan 

conversation with his teacher, and Sonia, for 
reasons of her own, did not appear. 

“ Well, we’re a quorum without them,” said 
Darby at last. “Let’s proceed.” 

“What’s a quorum?” demanded Trude, who 
liked everything made clear as she went along. 

“A quorum in this case is four — it’s a major- 
ity, Trude,” said Darby. “Joan’s to be presi- 
dent of this club.” 

“Oh, it’s not fair to elect officers without the 
rest,” cried Joan. “ I’m most sure Georgie won’t 
want me for president — she’ll want to be presi- 
dent herself, and so will Sonia.” 

“They can’t both be,” remarked Trude, the 
practical. 

“ No, but they ought to vote. Let’s only found 
the club to-day — I like to be quite square,” said 
Joan. 

“All right. Then here’s the oath that I’ve 
drawn up; if there’s anything you want different 
I’ll fix it up. If there isn’t, we’ll all say it with 
our right hands on our hearts. Then you’ll be 
told the secret.” 

So saying Darby unrolled an enormous sheet 


The Founding of an Order 85 

of paper on which, written very small in the 
middle of the sheet, he had inscribed the solemn 
vow of initiation. He began to read : “ I — here 
you each say your own name — solemnly promise 
to keep the pledge I hereby make, in defiance of 
fire, famine and sword ” 

“What does that mean?” interrupted Trude. 

“Oh, don’t bother, Trude,” cried Joan impa- 
tiently. “It just means you’ll never tell the 
secrets of this society, no matter what is done to 
make you.” 

“Who’d do it?” asked Trude, rather fright- 
ened, but Joan scowled at her, and Darby con- 
tinued : 

“ I solemnly promise never to reveal the awful 
secrets of the Society of the Knights of the Castle 
Dangerous.” 

Joan clapped her hands rapturously at this, 
and Dick cried : “ Say, that’s a dandy name, 

Darb!” 

Much flattered Darby read on: “I promise 
to follow my noble leaders to death and danger, 
to be faithful, secret and sure. I promise to 
never divulge ” 


86 


Nut-Brown Joan 

“ Never to divulge, Darby,” corrected Joan. 

“ Oh, plague take infinitives ! I’d like to split 
and burn them all,” sighed Darby. “Never to 
divulge, then, the secrets of this order, the end 
for which we are organised, or what transpires 
at our meetings ” 

“Happens, Darby. Nothing can transpire if 
we don't tell,” said Joan, who was nothing if not 
a born purist. 

“Oh, you always remember those things!” 
cried Darby. “I won’t say happens — occurs — 
what occurs at our meetings. And I promise and 
vow to be loyal to my fellow knights, and to 
succour them at the cost of my own life, and at 
all hazards. And here I set my sign and seal, 
and may I be consumed by the fire-spouting 
dragon if I break this vow.” 

“ That’s awful,” shuddered Trude. 

“That’s fine!” said Dick, pale from vaguely 
pictured horrors, but much impressed. 

Joan clapped her hands once more. “ It’s just 
great, Darby; it’s elegant! Now we’ll all repeat 
it, and sign the paper.” 

The vow was read in chorus, and the four sig- 


The Founding of an Order 87 

natures affixed to the sheet, which might have 
accommodated the Magna Charta. 

“Now for the secret. You tell, Joan,” said 
Darby handsomely, not wishing to monopolise 
the honours of the Founding of the Knights. 

Joan did not refuse her share, but began at 
once: “We are instituted, Brother Knights, to 
explore and disenchant the Castle Dangerous, 
which is known to you as the House Next Door. 
Sir Darby and I have discovered a means to 
enter, though it is thought to be an impregnable 
castle. We will go secretly and at once to begin 
our explorations without waiting for our recreant 
fellows. En avant! St. George for Merry Eng- 
land !” And Joan wheeled about to lead the 
way. 

“Oh, Joan, I’m scared!” cried Trude, falling 
back. 

Joan scowled dreadfully. “ Sir Gertrude,” 
she said in a heavy voice, “a true knight is 
without fear and without reproach. If you feel 
the fear you’ll get the reproach, too, if you 
betray it. Follow us!” 

Dick, pale but resolute, immediately fell in line 


88 Nut-Brown Joan 

behind Darby and Joan, and Trude dared not 
hang back. The four new knights crawled at 
once through the hedge separating the Darring- 
ton place from the scene of their coming adven- 
tures, painfully conscious that their manner of 
progress little resembled an onslaught on pranc- 
ing chargers. 

Darby and Joan led the way to the rear and 
to a narrow window some six feet above the 
ground. Darby produced a barrel concealed in 
some brushwood, and rolled it under the window, 
asking: “ Who’s first?” 

Dick and Trude both hesitated, so Joan 
mounted the barrel nimbly. 

“Have you been in before?” Trude shud- 
dered. 

“ No ; we found that this window opened, then 
we determined to make a secret society about it, 
so of course we waited for all the members to 
go in,” said Darby. 

Trude looked as though she could have ex- 
cused a lack of so much fidelity, but Joan threw 
up the sash triumphantly. “ Ready ! ” she cried, 
and stepped over the window sill, finding it 


The Founding of an Order 89 

difficult to get her tall figure down to the height 
of the middle sash. Dick followed, Darby lin- 
gering to give Trude the “boost” she sorely 
needed, for her trouble was the reverse of Joan’s; 
her plump little form inclining to stick fast in the 
narrow width of the window. Darby came last, 
and closed the window behind him. 

They had not been gone long when an elon- 
gated shadow fell across the dry grass, and Sonia 
appeared. She seated herself on the barrel head, 
waiting, with an air of malicious triumph, the 
reappearance of the Secret Society. 

In a short time Joan’s voice was heard declar- 
ing that they must rest satisfied with a survey of 
the first floor, and let the other members of the 
society join them in exploring further. Then 
Trude came to the window, and jumped back 
with a scream of terror, not recognising Sonia 
on the barrel. 

“ I heard your meeting. I was hidden behind 
the summerhouse,” said Sonia, dismounting, as 
Darby leaped out. 

“Why didn’t you come in?” asked Darby. 

“Because I don’t intend to join,” announced 


90 Nut-Brown Joan 

Sonia. “ I thought I’d see if it was any good — 
and it’s not.” 

“And you listened f When you didn’t mean 
to join, and after you’d been invited to?” cried 
Joan, leaping out of the window in a flash of 
indignation that took no cognisance of tight 
window sashes. 

Sonia laughed provokingly. “ I thought I 
might as well know your old secret, and I do 
— such as it is — the way you get in and all; I 
followed you here.” 

“What made you?” asked Trude, round-eyed 
and shocked — she was a most honourable little 
person. 

“Do you call that straight dealing?” asked 
Darby, wishing Sonia were a boy to be dealt with 
as she deserved. 

“Oh, I don’t know! I always look out for 
myself first,” said Sonia lightly. “I don’t like 
Joan — I’m sure she can’t bear me — and I thought 
I could get square with her. If she doesn’t mind 
her p’s and q’s I can tell about your stupid 
society.” 

“I don’t see how I could like you, Sophie,” 


The Founding of an Order 91 

flashed Joan, utterly unable to consider her obli- 
gations as a hostess. “ You’re quite the most 
disagreeable girl I ever saw. And if anything 
could prove that no one ought to like you, it’s 
this piece of meanness. But I’ve treated you 
well — you can’t say I haven’t — and you’ve been 
just as selfish and airy; but I’ve put up with it, 
and lent you my books — it’s the most unjust 
thing! ” Joan paused, breathless, and Darby said 
sternly: ‘‘You don’t have to like Joan — you 
probably couldn’t appreciate her — but you do 
have to behave decently, and this spying on us, 
when we’d been civil to you, is contemptible. 
What shall we do to her?” 

“You can’t do anything but be mad,” said 
Sonia, with much truth. 

“You ought to ostrichise her,” said Dick. 

“What does that mean?” asked Darby, while 
Joan laughed in spite of her wrath. 

“ Drive her out, like you would ostriches,” said 
Dick, reddening. 

“Ostracise her, kiddy,” said Darby kindly. 
“We’ll ostracise her all right! But she ought 
to suffer more than that.” 


92 


Nut-Brown Joan 

“We’ll consult with Guy and Georgie,” said 
Joan, walking off with her head high. 

Sonia laughed. “ Georgie won’t be interested 
in your baby play, and I’m not afraid of you. I 
got the best of you rather neatly, so the laugh 
is on my side; I thought you’d be mad.” 

“We’re very much disgusted,” said Trude un- 
expectedly, as she joined Joan and wound her 
plump arm around her elder’s waist. 

“You haven’t seen the last of this society,” 
said Dick darkly, though he had no idea what he 
meant, as he followed Trude. 

“ Yes, it will be a queer thing if we don’t make 
you sorry for to-day’s trick, Miss Sonia,” added 
Darby, as he tucked his hand through Joan’s 
arm with an air of protecting partisanship. 

Sonia laughed defiance and tossed her head as 
she walked away alone, to prove how little she 
minded the “ ostrichising ” which had already 
begun. 

Guy heard the tale that night with quick in- 
dignation, and although Georgie’s disapproval 
was lukewarm, no Darrington ever tolerated 
deceit, and Sonia was henceforth regarded con- 


The Founding of an Order 93 

temptuously by the youthful portion of the family 
— they did not report her dishonourable behaviour 
to the elders. 

Georgie and Guy were admitted that very 
night to the Society of the Knights of the Castle 
Dangerous. It was perfectly true that the Dar- 
ringtons had not seen the last of their society, 
and they little dreamed what a part it was to play 
in a drama yet to be enacted. 


CHAPTER VII 
GUESTS 



HE old coloured woman came — - 
and went. Her “ misery ” was 
confined to her knees and back, 
but the misery of the Darrington 
household during her stay was 
unlimited. She was succeeded, in a rapid suc- 
cession, by women brought from the city, some 
of whom merely came and saw, but all of whom 
conquered, if victory consists in reducing an en- 
tire family to despair. But at last a second old 
coloured “auntie” came, and stayed. She was 
marvellously slow, but, in her way, she was sure ; 
and hornets — nor Henley and Kenneth in their 
worst moments of mischief — could not ruffle her 
placid temper. 

“ It seems to me this house is getting to be a 
home for indignant females,” remarked Dick in 
his deliberate fashion, one morning, and though 
94 


Guests 


95 


Aunt Deb suggested that perhaps he had meant 
to say indigent, she inwardly admitted that the 
first word was quite as correct. 

It was when they were all so tired that they 
“ felt like a herd of camels dreading their last 
straws,” as Joan said, that Georgie came into 
the dining-room at luncheon one day, all sweet 
violets and sweet smiles, and threw a pale blue 
letter on the table. 

“ That’s from Vera Apthorp, mama,” she said, 
addressing the person to whom she felt it would 
be safest to make the announcement. “ She 
writes to say that she and Tillie Tyler and 
Blanche Horsley are coming here to make a 
visit” 

“Now? Oh, my darling!” exclaimed Mrs. 
Darrington, almost reproachfully. 

“ Head them off,” said Joan decisively. “You 
know they can’t come.” 

“ We asked them in the summer — you remem- 
ber, mama,” Georgie continued, ignoring Joan 
in the manner that young person always found 
peculiarly trying. “ We won’t mind them — they 
are awfully sweet, you know — and they were so 


96 Nut-Brown Joan 

nice to me we couldn’t possibly tell them not to 
come. They’ll just rest and amuse us.” 

“ I hardly think three guests, even young girls, 
could be amusing at this crisis,” said Aunt Deb 
drily. 

It happened that her husband’s decided aunt 
had the effect upon her niece-in-law of making 
whatever she opposed seem rather desirable, and 
this effect was heightened now by the opposition 
being to Georgie. 

“ After all, aunt,” said Mrs. Darrington, 
“they cannot make much difference in a house- 
hold as large as this one, and, as Georgie says, 
the invitation was given and accepted in the 
summer — we could hardly retract it. Well, 
write your friends, my precious, and tell them we 
shall give them a hearty welcome, though do- 
mestic affairs are so confused we may not be 
able to give them much else.” 

“ Oh, that’s all they’ll want — they won’t 
mind,” smiled Georgie easily. “ I knew you 
would be lovely about it, you dearest, sweetest 
mama.” 

Joan’s face was crimson with suppressed annoy- 


Guests 


97 


ance. Already Georgie did not “ play fair ” in the 
division of labour, labour which Joan was begin- 
ning to find far from the frolic which she had 
expected helping her father to be. And now, to 
bring three giggling, silly girls into the house — 
it really was too bad! How could her mother 
allow it? 

Joan distinctly recollected her disgust with 
the trio in question during the summer at the 
hotel where the Darringtons had met them. But 
poor mama was so sweet she never saw faults in 
others, and of course if Georgie liked them, and 
if Georgie wanted them, that settled it. Joan 
tried to choke down the half-consciousness of in- 
justice which she had been fighting all her life, 
but she did not battle very hard against her 
indignation toward Georgie. 

Nevertheless Georgie’s friends came at the 
end of the week. Vera was seventeen, but far 
more grown up than she would be, very possibly, 
at thirty-seven; Georgie admired and copied her 
with all her might. Blanche was just Georgie’s 
age, Tillie six months younger, but beside them 
both Joan felt herself a mere infant. 


9 8 


Nut-Brown Joan 


“ Aren’t you fourteen ? ” inquired Tillie, coming 
into the library on the second morning after her 
arrival. There was a world of scornful pity in 
her voice. Joan was sitting on the floor, her 
length of limb disposed of as best it could be, 
while she repaired the harness of Kenneth’s horse 
with an unmistakable interest and pleasure in the 
task and in the pretty toy itself. 

“ Yes,” said Joan, catching the innuendo, and 
annoyed to find herself blushing. 

“Vera’s only three years older than you, and 
she’s engaged,” continued Tillie. 

“How silly! ” exclaimed Joan contemptuously. 

“It’s a secret; no one knows, not even her 
mother,” said Tillie, disappointed of the effect she 
had meant to produce, and following her an- 
nouncement with one that she felt was thrillingly 
romantic. 

But Joan looked up with a shocked, as well as 
disgusted expression, and said : “ How horrid ! 

It’s a pity to be both silly and wicked.” 

Before the consequences of her bluntness could 
fall on Joan’s head Blanche created a diversion 
by exclaiming from her post at the window: 


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99 

“ Here comes an awfully handsome boy ; who is 
he?” 

Joan scrambled to her feet, hoping that it might 
be Darby, for her whole soul longed for a breath 
of mental fresh air and a jolly, sensible talk with 
her chum. 

“That's Darby!” she cried, brightening, and 
waving her hand wildly for him to come in, 
though he was already making the best time in his 
power up the walk. 

“ Oh, Georgie told us about him,” said Tillie, 
looking queerly at Joan. “Don't you wish you 
had some of his beauty? — it's wasted on a 
boy. Suppose I make him like me better 
than you — take him for my friend instead of 
yours ? ” 

“You mean suppose you should try” said 
Joan, with a contemptuous little laugh. “ It 
wouldn’t be much use.” 

“You're not at all conceited!” remarked 
Tillie. 

“ It's not my part of it, but Darby's true blue 
— he’d stick to his friends! Besides, he doesn't 
like silly ” Here Joan stopped just in time, 


LofC. 


IOO 


Nut-Brown Joan 

remembering that this exasperating piece of 
folly, called Tillie, was a guest in her house, and 
it would not do to tell her she was silly. 

Darby entered at that moment, preventing 
Tillie’s retort, but she threw a glance that was 
anything but amiable at tall Joan. 

“ Hallo, J. ! I came to ask you to go over to 
see my new horse. Mother’s bought me a James 
dandy — oh, I beg pardon,” added Darby, stop- 
ping short as he espied Georgie’s friends. 

“These are the little girls I told you about, 
whom we met at the hotel last summer,” said 
Joan wickedly. “ Georgie’s friends, you know. 
Miss Blanch Horsley, Tillie Tyler, Darley Dan- 
forth, better known as Darby.” 

“ Awfully glad to meet you,” murmured 
Blanche engagingly, while Tillie said sweetly: 
“ Hurry and get ready, Joan dear. A new horse 
is so fearfully interesting that I don’t see how 
you can wait to get there! We’ll take care of 
your friend while you’re getting dressed — if he’ll 
put up with us. Don’t mind going out and leav- 
ing us alone; we’ll get on all right. Georgie’s 
taken our friend, Miss Apthorp, out with her 


Guests ioi 

cousin Sonia and left us to Joan,” she added, 
turning to Darby. 

Darby looked annoyed, but was too polite to 
fail in making the obvious answer, though he saw 
Joan’s quick look of disappointment, and he him- 
self wanted anything rather than such com- 
panions as these. 

“You can come with us, if you like,” he said, 
not very graciously. 

“Oh, how dear of you! Of course we like, 
don’t we, Blanche dearest? Run on, Joan, and 
do be quick, for I’m dying to see the horse,” 
cried Tillie. And as Joan left the room she 
added: “What a nice little girl she is! When 
she’s our age she’s going to be one of those sen- 
sible kind that all the lively ones count on, isn’t 
she ? It’s awfully nice she is like that, because it 
gives pretty Georgie a chance to go out more. 
And Joan likes housework.” 

Darby hated this speech, although he could not 
tell what was wrong about it, except its English. 
He began to feel very much as he had when he 
had rescued Ban-Ban, and longed to fight, yet 
could not say what there was to attack. 


102 


Nut-Brown Joan 

“I think Joan is our age already,” he said. 
“ Or mine at least, for I’m only a year older than 
she. And I guess she doesn’t always like house- 
work any better than any other girl, only she does 
what she thinks she ought, and Georgie does 
what’s pleasant. Joan is a trump.” 

Tillie laughed gaily. “ So are you, to stick up 
for her,” she said. “Joan said no matter what 
she did, you couldn’t be shaken. I think she’s 
awfully nice, so you needn’t peck at me. But I 
do think it’s queer she’s such a baby, and I am as 
sorry as I can be she’s so homely, because, no 
matter how nice a girl is, it’s pleasanter to have 
pretty girls for friends.” 

“Joan is pretty,” said Darby loyally, though in 
his heart he did not quite think this word applied 
to his chum. “ She has the finest eyes I ever 
saw, and a nice mouth, and she — well, she looks 
all right.” 

But Tillie’s words left a sting. It was so 
unlike Joan, and not quite pleasant, that she had 
boasted of his friendship. And to be represented 
as the kind of boy one “couldn’t shake”! “It 
made a fellow seem like an idiot,” thought Darby. 


Guests 


103 


How could Joan have said such a stupid, ill-bred 
thing ? It never occurred to this honest boy that 
Tillie could misrepresent Joan. 

The little party of four set forth with a shadow 
over two of its members. Joan could not rally 
from the disappointment of being cheated out of 
a free hour with Darby, who always cheered her 
up and made things easier. She found that she 
was very tired, and the wind struck her as bitterly 
cold; she buried the tip of her nose in her muff, 
and her entire self in silence, and trudged along 
with a heavy heart. 

Darby glanced at her at intervals, and, like a 
true man in embryo, took her silence for some- 
thing personal, and felt aggrieved. Blanche, but 
especially Tillie, made themselves very gay com- 
panions; all the fun was theirs. Joan felt that 
they had ruined her home — she was in a super- 
lative mood — and now they were stealing her best 
friend! The more unhappy she got, the more 
silent she grew, and the more they shone by con- 
trast. Even Sonia, with her selfishness, her 
intolerable conceit and her dishonour, seemed 
almost lovable to poor Joan now, by contrast, as 


104 Nut-Brown Joan 

she walked gloomily behind Tillie and Darby, 
listening to Tillie’s giggles. 

Joan brightened a little at the sight of the 
beautiful bay horse which Mrs. Danforth had 
bought for her boy’s use; she loved horses so 
dearly that magnificent Abdallah cheered her 
heart. But Tillie contrived to appropriate the 
horse, as she had his master, and when she pro- 
duced from her pocket the sugar with which she 
had thoughtfully provided herself from the Dar- 
rington sugar bowl, and Abdallah snuggled his 
glorious head upon her shoulder, begging for 
more, and Darby laughed out in manifest pleasure 
over his new pet’s friendliness, Joan found her- 
self once more pushed aside, and felt still more 
miserable than she had before. 

Darby let the girls go home alone. Blanche 
and Tillie bade him a gushing good-bye, but Joan 
took her leave so quietly, and looked so pale and 
unhappy, that Darby’s heart smote him as he sud- 
denly realised that he had let these strangers take 
his own chum’s place, and remembered how tired 
and troubled she was. 

“ I’ll bet they make it harder for her! I don’t 


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105 


believe they help at all,” he thought, and he said 
aloud: “Abdallah goes as well in harness as in 
the saddle, Joan. I want you with me when I 
first try him. If I come over for you in the 
morning will you take a tearing spin in the cart ? 
He’s full of spirit, but he isn’t wicked, and I know 
you won’t be afraid. I want you to share the 
first drive with him — he’s got to be half yours, 
anyway.” 

Joan blushed with delight, and looked up with 
her big dark eyes so alight with joy and gratitude 
that even Blanche and Tillie saw for an amazed 
moment that just then, at least, Joan was far 
from a homely girl. 

“ Indeed I’ll go, Darby,” she cried. “ I’m not 
afraid of any horse, and you’re just fine to want 
me to share Abdallah ! ” 

“I’ll give thee half, I can no more,” chanted 
Darby. “ I’d like to know what’s the use of 
having a Darby, Joan, if it’s not to share and 
share alike.” 

“ I shall not have much to share with you this 
winter except housework — and fudge ! ” said 
Joan, but she laughed as she said it; the sudden 


io6 Nut-Brown Joan 

restoration to her own first place in Darby’s 
friendship had cleared her skies, and made her 
lesser trials quite bearable. 

But Tillie nudged Blanche and whispered 
something, and Blanche said sweetly: “You 
known, dear Joan, you promised Georgie and 
Vera, and Sonia and me to go in town with us 
to-morrow. Your friend will have to drive with- 
out you, for we couldn’t possibly let you off. 
Even if we didn’t want you so dreadfully, you 
know we would be an odd number without you, 
and that’s horrid going about.” 

Joan cast a look of utter despair on Darby. 
“That’s true,” she said in a woe-begone voice, 
all the light fading from her face. “ I did say I’d 
go, and auntie has engaged a woman to help 
Ambrosia, so I suppose I couldn’t put off the 
trip.” 

“It’s a shame. Never mind; I’ll ride to-mor- 
row, and drive the next day, or the day after, or 
the day after that,” declared Darby stoutly. 
“You’ve got to go on that first drive, if I have 
to wait weeks for you. Don’t mind, J., old fellow, 
— not but what it’s a shame, though.” 


Guests 


107 


“ 4 It’s a shame, a measly shame/ ” sang Tillie, 
looking very pleased, and taking a few waltz 
steps to that popular, if not classic air. 

“ Is your new old woman called Ambrosia?” 
asked Darby, with some indication in his face of 
an unchivalric desire to shake Tillie. 

“Yes; isn’t it a lovely name? We call her 
Brosie for short,” said Joan. “ Good-bye, Darby, 
once more.” 

“ Good-bye, J. The day after to-morrow 
then,” called back Darby, as the girl moved away. 

“ He’s awfully nice, Joan,” said Tillie, taking 
Joan’s arm affectionately. “Don’t you think he 
found me nice too ? ” 

“I should say he did!” cried Blanche admir- 
ingly. 

“ Why shouldn’t he? Only he’s more of a boy 
than you are,” said Joan, trying not to pull her 
arm away. 

“More of a boy! Why, how funny, Joan! I 
don’t claim to be a boy at all,” laughed Tillie. 

“Well, you know what I mean — you’re more 
grown up than Darby. No, you’re girl enough 
— I’ll say that for you ! ” said Joan impatiently. 


CHAPTER VIII 

A DRIVE THAT WAS NOT DRIVEN 


HE next day Joan made a reluc- 
tant sixth in the expedition to the 
city. There was a brief exhilara- 
tion in starting off to catch the 
8:22 train, with the morning 
wind whipping her cheeks — she liked to go to 
town under favourable circumstances as well as 
any other suburban girl — but there the fun 
ceased. 

She felt — as she indignantly told herself — 
“ like a little yellow dog,” all day. The five young 
ladies whom she accompanied considered her 
and her tastes quite beneath the notice of their 
superiority, and she trotted behind the chattering 
group, getting jostled by the crowds, which 
struck her as bigger and ruder than she had ever 
seen them, in a manner that really was not unlike 
an unfortunate, snubbed little dog. Pardonable 
wrath filled her heart as she remembered Darby, 

108 



A Drive that Was not Driven 109 

and the drive with the new horse which she might 
have been enjoying. 

The girls lingered in front of shop windows. 
Joan despised shopping and had very little in- 
terest in adorning her person, hopelessly unat- 
tractive, as she firmly believed it it be. Sonia, 
too, scorned this form of diversion, but fellow 
feeling on this point was no comfort to Joan, for 
Sonia snubbed her in a highly intellectual manner, 
while the other four snubbed her frivolously. 

“ I wish Darby had come with us ! ” thought 
Joan, bending her head before the keen blast 
sweeping up Twenty-third Street from the East 
River. “We’d have cut off to the Natural His- 
tory Museum, or for a race in the Park, or done 
something decent. If ever I go anywhere again 
with this flock of geese, my name’s not Joan 
Darrington ! ” 

Three hours of a matinee were some consola- 
tion, though Joan did not care much for the play, 
and got home, tired and cross, to take refuge 
immediately after dinner upstairs with Trude. 
In the midst of the unsatisfactoriness of the big 
girls “swarming in the house,” as Joan put it, 


I IO 


Nut-Brown Joan 

Joan was beginning to find her staid little ten 
years old sister, with her clear eyes and reliable 
common sense, such a rock of refuge as was at 
once unexpected and consoling. 

“You used to think you wanted more than 
anything else in the world to be pretty and 
awfully clever, Joan,” said Trude, as Joan rose, 
stretching her arms up wearily to the extent of 
their length, having finished her story of the 
day’s trials. 

“Well, why not?” demanded Joan. “I still 
want to be both.” 

“ Sonia is clever — or I suppose she is, she 
thinks she is — and those three girls of Georgie’s 
are pretty,” said Trude gravely. “I shouldn’t 
think you’d care much if you weren’t like Sonia 
or them. I guess everybody that was anybody 
would think you were nicer than they are, Joan, 
if you do think you’re homely — though you’re 
not homely, not a bit.” 

“Oh, pshaw, Trudie! Geese are just geese, 
pretty or not,” said Joan, kissing Trude and dodg- 
ing the question of cleverness. But in her heart 
she felt that sensible little Trude was right, and 


A Drive that Was not Driven iii 

that there was something desirable in the world 
besides the bookworm or the beauty. 

Joan got up bright and early in the morning, 
not to shirk her full share in the duties of the 
household, and yet be ready for her drive with 
Darby when he should come for her. Lessons 
were suffering in the general confusion, but there 
was no help for it just then; neither Aunt Deb 
nor Joan had time to carry out their programme 
and sit down together for three quiet hours while 
Georgie’s friends were visiting them. Joan did 
not grieve over the delay, and Aunt Deb con- 
soled herself by remembering how far in advance 
of most girls of her age Joan was, being the sort 
of person to whom knowledge adheres, like a 
desirable sort of bacillus. 

Joan sang about her tasks for an hour, and then 
she worked quietly, subdued by all she found to 
do. Neither Sonia, Vera, Blanche, nor Tillie — 
nor Georgie, for that matter — seemed to pick up 
one thing that they ever dropped, nor put back 
in its place a single article that they ever used. 
Joan found her patience slipping away as she 
went from room to room, hanging up garments 


I I 2 


Nut-Brown Joan 

and straightening bureaus and tables in the cham- 
bers, and picking up books, gloves, caramel 
papers, everything, likely and unlikely, in the 
other rooms. 

“ If I ever go visiting — and goodness knows, I 
don’t see how I’ll ever have time again to go any- 
where or do anything!” thought Joan, shaking 
vindictively a skirt of Blanche’s which she had 
just picked up from where it lay in a ring, pre- 
cisely as the girl had stepped out of it. “ If ever 
I should go visiting, if I’m not neat after this! 
I won’t leave a— 1 -a breath around for anyone to 
pick up, not if the house is Aladdin’s palace, with a 
whole chandelier of magic lamps, and ten thou- 
sand genii to serve the family when they ring — 
no, when they rub for them ! Look at that over- 
shoe! ’Way under the bed where it flew when 
it was kicked off! That’s that shiftless Vera! 
And she says she’s engaged — humph! There 
can’t be such a dunce in all the world as to be 
engaged to her — a girl seventeen, too ! The bare 
idea! I’ll just let that rubber stay there, and she 
may hunt for it.” 

But Joan’s innate sense of order made it im- 


A Drive that Was not Driven 113 

possible to fulfil her threat without serious dis- 
comfort to herself, and presently she emerged 
from under the bed, having fished the rubber out, 
breathless, her face flushed and her patience at 
low ebb. 

At last, however, her morning tasks were done, 
and she made herself ready for her drive, with her 
spirits rising. It was a perfect morning, bright 
and sunny, with a fresh, crispy feeling in the 
wind, and Abdallah and Darby would compensate 
for much. Darby had a tutor, and began work 
at eight, stopping at half past ten, and resuming 
labours at one. He had not always been strong, 
and his mother preferred his studies to be thus 
divided, to give him a chance to enjoy the best 
part of each day out-of-doors. 

Joan reckoned that he might be expected about 
a quarter to eleven, and sat down to make herself 
happy at the piano while awaiting him; Joan was 
a born musician, and was quite oblivious to time’s 
passing when her fingers were on the keys. 

Dick had a cold and was at home. He crept 
with his book into the parlour, for Dick too was 
musical, and usually found his way thither when 


1 1 4 N ut-B rown J oan 

Joan played. Henley wandered into the room 
shortly, serenely unconscious of irregular streaks 
of brownish stickiness on his cheeks, beyond the 
reach of his tongue, with which he had removed 
all trace of a recent crime from his mouth, and, 
as he fondly believed, from his entire face. But 
Joan, catching sight of him, brought down both 
hands in a crashing discord. 

“ Hen, for pity’s sake, where have you been?” 
she cried. 

“He’s been to the pantry syruptitiously, J.” 
said Dick quietly. 

“I should say he had!” cried Joan, not stop- 
ping to laugh or to groan at the pun. “ Go 
right upstairs to nurse — oh, there isn’t any nurse ! 
Well, go find Georgie and get her to wash your 
face, or Sonia, or Brosie — or anybody ; I’m going 
out. You’re a bad boy; you’ve been taking 
things ! ” 

“It wasn’t things; it was just a little, little 
maple syrup, Joan. And I was hungry, and it 
was awful good. And there wasn’t much,” 
added Henley, seeing Joan’s frown gathering. 

“ You don’t mean — you can’t mean that you’ve 


A Drive that Was not Driven 115 

eaten all the maple syrup? ” cried Joan, her wrath 
giving way to genuine fear of the consequences. 

Henley nodded, being truthful in his misde- 
meanours. There was no time to say more, for 
a wail came from the head of the stairs, and 
Kenneth shrieked: “You said you’d get it with 
me, you said so, Hen. And you’ve eated it all, 
all up!” 

With this pathetic lament Ken started down 
stairs to finish his reproaches at shorter range. 
His eyes were blinded with tears, his feet reckless 
in his despairing sense of his betrayal. Too reck- 
less, f6r after two steps he fell, and the horrified 
children heard the thud of his soft little body at 
the foot of the stairs before the echo of his piping 
voice had died away. 

Joan rushed to pick him up, her lips white, and 
uttering no sound. Dick sat motionless; he had 
a trick of fainting, for which the boys laughed at 
him, and he half swooned now as he heard Ken- 
neth strike the rug. 

“Aunt Deb, mama — get them, Hen,” whis- 
pered Joan. 

Henley moved slowly away ; he was too fright- 


1 1 6 N ut-B rown J oan 

ened to run, and Joan chafed Kenneth’s wrists 
impatiently as she waited help. 

Ambrosia appeared, followed by Henley, and 
Sonia, Vera, Blanche, and Georgie came running 
downstairs with frightened faces. 

“You’ ma and you’ auntie’s out, Miss Joan, 
dear,” said Brosie. “ Give me de po’ chile. No 
bones is broke; I’m certain sure er dat,” she 
added, feeling Ken over as if he had been a quail 
for broiling. “Bress de Lawd, he’s cornin’ to! 
Kinder stunned him, I reckon. Here’s Brosie, 
Master Ken, honey; don’t you know Brosie? 
Huht you anywheres, honey?” 

“Joan, Joan, I want Joan!” wailed Kenneth, 
remembering suddenly what had happened, and 
beginning to shake with terror and to cry tem- 
pestuously. 

“Here’s Joan, baby,” said Joan, putting out 
her arms. Taking Ken into them she seated 
herself on the lower step of the stairs and gently 
rocked the screaming child to and fro. 

“ He ain’t huht much if he kin holler like dat,” 
said Ambrosia gratefully. “ I reckon he’ll be 
all right soon’s he gits ovah bein’ scared.” 


A Drive that Was not Driven 117 

“ Telephone for the doctor, anyway, Georgie,” 
said Joan to her elder, who stood by wringing her 
hands dramatically but ineffectually. “ And 
Sonia, please, see why Dick stays in there; I’m 
afraid he has fainted. You mustn’t cry so, Ken, 
darling. Here’s Joan, Joan has you all safe, and 
you’re all right. There, there, don’t; you are 
all right.” And Joan buried her little brother’s 
face in her fur collar as she held him still closer. 

Kenneth’s sobs grew quieter, and Joan’s breath 
came more naturally, as her heart gradually got 
back its normal pace. A voice outside cried: 
“Whoa!” and Joan started to her feet. “Oh, 
there’s Darby!” she cried. She had completely 
forgotten her drive in the fright of Kenneth’s 
fall. 

Ambrosia appeared at this opportune moment 
with a glass of warm milk. 

“Oh, that’s the very thing!” cried Joan re- 
lieved — she did want so very much to go with 
Darby. “That will make him all comfy, and 
then he’ll go to sleep. Can you hold him a little 
while, Brosie?” 

“Law bless you, yes, honey; dar ain’t no 


1 1 8 Nut-Brown Joan 

hurry ’bout nothin’ ’long’s de baby ain’t huht,” 
said the good soul comfortably. “ Come to Bro- 
sie, Master Ken, and see what she done got yer.” 

But Kenneth uttered a piercing shriek. “ No, 
no, no!” he screamed. “I won’t go! I want 
Joan. Don’t go, Joan; don’t leave poor tumbled 
Ken.” 

Joan could hardly help laughing at this pa- 
thetic appeal, though she saw that it meant the 
sacrifice of her drive. 

“ I won’t go, dearie ; I’ll stay,” she said, with a 
long sigh following her smile, and the corners of 
her lips dropping. “ Brosie will give me the milk, 
and, Georgie, please go out and tell Darby what 
has happened — he doesn’t dare leave Abdallah. 
And tell him I’m fearfully, dreadfully disap- 
pointed, for I did want to go so very, very much, 
and I’ve hurried all the morning to be ready.” 
And two tears just missed falling into Kenneth’s 
glass of milk. 

“ You should never let a young man know you 
care about his invitations, Joan child,” said Vera. 

“ Young men don’t bother with little girls,” 
said Joan curtly. “ Darby’s a boy. As though 


A Drive that Was not Driven 119 

I wouldn’t let him know I appreciated his kind- 
ness whatever he was — a rattlesnake, even ! 
Please hurry, Georgie.” 

But at this moment Tillie, whose absence no 
one had noticed when the others had rushed down- 
stairs, appeared on the upper landing, dressed for 
going out, even to her muff. “ I’m going down 
the street, Georgie,” she said sweetly. “ Let me 
tell Joan’s handsome friend how Kenneth fell, 
and that she can’t leave him; you’ll take cold if 
you go out bareheaded.” 

“ I’d rather Georgie went,” said Joan bluntly, 
and then stopped short, mortified by her own rude- 
ness and the reproachful look which Georgie be- 
stowed upon her. 

“Afraid I won’t tell him? I truly will,” said 
Tillie, so good-naturedly that Joan felt more than 
ever ashamed. 

“ Oh, of course I know you’ll tell him ; go 
ahead, Tillie,” she said stiffly. “ I beg your par- 
don. And if he asks you when I can go — you 
know he wants me to have the first drive with 
Abdallah — tell him to-morrow at this time.” 

“ Where are you going, Tillie? ” asked Georgie, 


120 


Nut-Brown Joan 

but Tillie apparently did not hear, for she went 
out without answering. 

Vera and Blanche ran into the library to look 
after her while Joan kept to her post, giving Ken 
his milk. 

“ They’re talking, and Tillie is being lovely,” 
Joan heard Blanche say. “Do you know I do 
believe she stayed upstairs to get ready when we 
came down, and that she meant to make that boy 
take her driving? She guessed Joan couldn’t go 
when Ken fell. That’s just like her; she’s foxy! 
See! I told you! Isn’t she simply great?” 

Joan started to her feet, but Kenneth wailed, 
and, remembering her duty and her pride, she sat 
down again. Her cheeks burned and her eyes 
flashed. If that sly, that dreadful girl should 
cheat her out of that first drive with Abdallah! 
She grasped the glass quite fiercely, consoling 
herself by remembering that she had always dis- 
liked Tillie. 

Georgie and Sonia had joined the group in the 
library. There was no one, fortunately, to see the 
big tears of helpless wrath and disappointment 
in Joan’s eyes. 


A Drive that Was not Driven 121 

There was a shout of laughter from the girls, 
and Vera and Blanche exclaimed: “ Well, if she 
doesn't beat all ! ” 

Then the wheels of Darby’s light cart grated 
as if he were turning, and Abdallah trotted rapidly 
away. 

“ Say, Tillie’s gone with him; he’s taken Tillie 
in your place ! ” cried the girls, rushing out to 
Joan. 

“ I suppose she made him,” said Joan. “ I hope 
she’ll enjoy herself — and I hope she’ll tell Darby 
the truth about my not going,” she added, with 
irrepressible anger. 

“Well, you are mad, little girl!” laughed 
Blanche spitefully, while Georgie said severely: 
“ I’ll trouble you to be civil about my guest, miss.” 

Joan arose, and went upstairs to hide her face. 
She held Kenneth close to cover her burning 
cheeks and wet eyes. The child felt very heavy, 
but the poor, tired, disappointed little girl’s heart 
was far heavier to carry than her grumbling and 
sleepy little brother. 


CHAPTER IX 

THE DEFECTION OF DARBY 

OAN laid Kenneth in his crib, 
patted and soothed him into 
sound slumber, and then went 
into her own room and shut and 
bolted the door behind her. No 
one now could see her bitter disappointment, nor 
the far more bitter hurt of having her own special 
chum apparently forget her and take another in 
her place on the promised first drive with Ab- 
dallah. Face downward on the bed, her head 
buried under the pillows which had toppled over 
on her unheeded, Joan sobbed her aching heart 
out. 

“ Pm so tired, I’m so tired,” she moaned over 
and over again, remembering with sudden weari- 
ness all her unaccustomed efforts of the past 
weeks, and especially the countless pickings up 



122 


The Defection of Darby 123 

and settings straight these friends of Georgie’s 
had cost her. 

How she had crawled under the bed after 
Vera’s rubber that very morning! How she had 
rescued Blanche’s skirt from the floor where she 
had dropped it ! It was so very hard and unfair 
to have to do these things ! Somehow the recol- 
lection of them made Tillie’s victory ten times 
more unbearable, and Joan cried more miserably 
than ever as she recalled them. No one knew — 
and oh, Darby didn’t care! — how much she had 
longed for that drive. She thought how Abdal- 
lah was prancing in the sharp air, and how Darby 
was holding him on a tight rein, with that proud 
look of determination about his lips which Joan 
loved to see. She wailed aloud as she realised 
that Tillie was seeing it that moment, and not she 
whose right it was to share Darby’s joys and 
sorrows, according to their solemn compact of 
comradeship. 

And he had forgotten! No mere loss of 
pleasure could hurt like that thought. But Joan 
was by nature inclined to look on the bright side, 
and she was too loyal long to suspect a friend 


124 Nut-Brown Joan 

without beginning to find excuses for him. Per- 
haps Tillie had asked Darby to take her as far as 
the shops; perhaps, after all, he had not been at 
all to blame. Once the idea had occurred to her, 
Joan felt quite certain that he had not been in 
fault, and she cried more softly, and finally dried 
her tears altogether under the balm of this in- 
spiration. 

At last she threw off the pillows, and sat up, 
mopping her eyes while she swung her feet over 
the edge of the bed in a melancholy manner. 
Her handkerchief was but a grey wet ball, quite 
useless, and Joan slid to her feet to look for 
another. 

Her skirt was badly wrinkled, and her face 
much swollen as she confronted herself in the 
glass. And just then the clock on her dresser — 
the tiny clock with the disproportioned voice — 
announced twelve o’clock, and Joan realised 
that she was due downstairs to set the table for 
luncheon. 

“ Mercy me ; they shan’t see how I’ve been cry- 
ing! I won’t give them the satisfaction of 
knowing I minded ! ” thought Joan. “ How shall 


The Defection of Darby 125 

I ever make myself presentable? ” She set the 
hot water running in the dressing-room, and 
threw it — a little hotter than she could well bear 
— over her disfigured face, following this treat- 
ment with a dash of cold water. She then dabbed 
violet water on her red eyelids, smoothed her 
hair, and, fondly hoping that she had concealed 
damages, started for the dining-room. 

She had actually forgotten Ken, but now his 
voice floated up to her from below chanting: 


“ I want some ginger snaps, 

I want some pie ; 

I want old shoes and caps — 
Cold ’taties — any scraps — 
I’m so hun-ger-i. ” 


A song Joan had herself composed for Hen 
and Ken's especial use, owing to their insatiable 
appetites. 

“ At least Ken's all right," thought Joan, “ and 
that's a comfort." 

Staid little Trude was setting the table in her 
sister’s stead, and had almost finished her task. 
“Why didn't you come down, Joan?" asked 


126 


Nut-Brown Joan 

Trude, immediately adding: “What were you 
crying about?” 

“Oh, did you see I had been crying?” asked 
Joan reproachfully. “ I thought I’d made myself 
all right. I don’t want those girls to know.” 

“Well, maybe they won’t; they don’t see 
much,” said Trude, with the scorn of one who 
used her eyes to very good purpose. “ What’s 
the matter?” 

“Well, I’ll tell you, Trudie, because you’re so 
sensible, if you are four years younger than I 
am,” Joan began, as she selected the forks she 
needed. And then she proceeded to relate to 
Trude her wrongs of the morning. 

“ I wouldn’t have minded so much not going if 
Darby hadn’t forgotten all about that I was to 
have had the first drive, and taken Tillie in my 
place,” she ended, with a quiver of voice and 
chin. 

“H’m! I don’t suppose he did forget,” said 
Trude scornfully. “ That Tillie Tyler just asked 
him to take her, and he couldn’t say no to a girl 
— Darby’s so fearfully polite! He’s just as mad 
as you are, ’most likely. I wouldn’t care. Don’t 


The Defection of Darby 127 

you let those mean girls know you care ! I think 
they’re the horridest girls! I believe I’ll ask 
mama to send ’em home — they make Dick and 
me nearly sick in bed; they’re really worse than 
Sonia! I heard Vera and Blanche telling 
Georgie to curl her hair and put powder on her 
face — just because her hair curls so nice now, 
and her complexion is so pretty — their hair is 
like pokers ! ” 

“You know they’re pretty, Trudie — you said 
so yourself the other day,” said Joan, comforted 
by her younger sister’s disgust and her stolid 
common sense. 

“Oh, I don’t know — yes, I guess they are. 
But Georgie’s prettier, and you’re the nicest look- 
ing of ’em all, J. You look like the people that 
they used to paint hundreds of years ago, when 
the old masters were young,” said the embryo 
artist critically. 

Joan laughed, and said: “You’re the only 
one who sees anything good about my looks, 
Trudie. I’m glad someone does, for it’s awful 
to be a homely girl.” 

Tillie came in radiant from the cold, and 


128 


Nut-Brown Joan 

breathlessly animated. “Oh, I’ve had such a 
time ! ” she cried as she pulled off her gloves, and, 
rolling them into a ball, threw them on the sofa 
for someone else to pick up and put away. “ I 
never had such a glorious drive — what a horse 
that is ! I wouldn’t let Darby bring me home — 
it was so late. Why on earth do you call him 
Darby? It is so ugly — and not very appro- 
priate,” she added, glancing slyly at Joan as she 
tossed her hat after the gloves, and fluffed her 
pompadour with her fingers. 

“It’s because he and Joan are such chums,” 
explained Trude, as Joan pressed her lips together 
hard to keep back the words which leaped to 
them. “It’s Darby and Joan, you know. Guy 
did it — we think it’s splendid.” 

“ Well, I think it’s stupid, and I don’t believe he 
likes it. He said he was sorry you couldn’t come, 
Joan — at first. He didn’t seem very sorry after- 
ward. I think he’s awfully bright and jolly. 
He’s coming to take me out again — he said so,” 
said Tillie. 

Joan’s dignity kept her from letting her quick 
temper flare out as she left the room holding her 


The Defection of Darby 129 

head high in the air, but it was not sufficiently 
master to keep her from slamming the door 
behind her with eloquent violence. 

Tillie laughed, but Trude looked at her with 
steady, grave-eyed disapproval. “ You’re dread- 
fully silly, besides being mean, if you think you 
can make Darby like you better than such a girl 
as my sister Joan, Tillie Tyler,” she said. 

Georgie, entering with the other three big girls 
at this moment, prevented whatever consequences 
might have followed Trude’s candour, and when 
Joan returned she had got herself so well in hand 
that there was only her heightened colour to be- 
tray her annoyance. 

In spite of Trude’s boast of Darby’s loyalty to 
Joan, days passed, and no Darby came. Joan 
missed her frank, affectionate, sympathetic chum 
more than she liked to confess, for, if he was no 
more constant a friend than this, Joan was not 
willing to miss him. She took what scant com- 
fort she could out of the fact that Tillie never 
got her second drive — Darby was not seen by any 
of the inmates of the Darrington house. 

In the meantime Joan had other trials. Mrs. 


130 Nut-Brown Joan 

Darrington, caught in a half-hearted snowstorm, 
which melted as it fell, came home one night 
from the city with skirts bedrabbled and wet feet, 
to be laid up with a sore throat for eight days. 
And Blanche took this opportune time to in- 
vite Georgie, Sonia and her two especial friends, 
Vera and Tillie, to a matinee, after which 
they supped luxuriously on lobster salad, ice 
cream and eclairs before coming out on the 5 145 
train with Mr. Darrington. The lobster had 
evidently been canned — English Aunt Deb said 
“ tinned ” — too late in its career. The other four 
girls escaped with only slight discomfort from the 
deadly combination of stale canned lobster and 
ice cream, but their hostess suffered sorely. For 
several hours Blanche was sharply ill; Aunt Deb 
and kind old Brosie worked over her all night, 
and the doctor was summoned in hot haste at 
midnight. By morning Blanche was out of dan- 
ger, but was sentenced to her bed for several days, 
and then, before the breakfast had been cleared 
away, Mr. Abner Brodnax arrived! 

Joan saw him from the kitchen as she carried 
out the coffee cups, and startled Brosie by drop- 


The Defection of Darby 13 1 

ping her burden on the table and herself in a 
chair with one dramatic movement, and bursting 
into hysterical laughter. 

“ Dearie me, Miss Joan, honey, wha’s de 
mahter? You’s wohkin’ too hahd; you’s all ti’d 
out. Dose foolish frien’s er Miss Geo’gie’s dey’s 
only good ter make mo’ trouble. Ef dey ain’t 
eatin’ lobsteh, dey’s doing som’in wohse,” said 
the good old woman indignantly. 

“ No, I’m not sick, nor crazy, Brosie,” sobbed 
Joan, “but Uncle Abner Brodnax has just come 
— I saw him — and he’s the last straw.” 

“You’ uncle? Just come? He’s a straw? 
Sho’ly, honey, you ain’t right well,” said Brosie, 
with solicitude. 

“ He’s not a straw, Ambrosia — he’s the last 
straw, the very last touch when we’re ready to go 
to pieces, like card tents — don’t you understand, 
Brosie ? And he’s not my uncle ; we only call him 
uncle — I guess everyone calls him Uncle Abner 
Brodnax. He’s queer — oh, dear me, he is so 
queer! He eats only cereals, and he won’t sit 
where there’s a fire, yet he’s so dreadfully afraid 
of draughts you can hardly open a window on 


132 Nut-Brown Joan 

the same floor with him. And he has the most 
peculiar notions, and the most awful way of say- 
ing ‘Hey?’ We have to be very nice to him, 
for he was a great friend of grandpa’s, and papa 
wants him to be made perfectly happy here, espe- 
cially because he was mortally offended for ages 
because Guy wasn’t named Abner Brodnax Dar- 
rington — the idea ! And I’m sure I don’t see how 
we can make him perfectly happy now with mama 
sick, and Blanche half dead of old lobster, and no 
one but you to cook. And you’re awfully tired, 
you good old soul, you,” added Joan, as she real- 
ised Ambrosia’s burden, and her loss of sleep the 
preceding night. 

“ Oh, don’ you worry ’bout me, honey ; I’se 
all right. You go right ’long an’ ’ceive dis ol’ 
ge’man — maybe dere ain’t nobody ’round to 
’ceive him,” said kind Brosie. “ You’s havin’ 
mighty hahd times you’sef late along, Miss Joan, 
deah.” 

“ Well, it isn’t much fun,” acknowledged Joan 
as she pulled herself together mentally, and her 
body out of the chair to meet her new obliga- 
tions. 


The Defection of Darby 133 

Going down the hall she heard Aunt Deb’s 
voice, and knew Uncle Abner had been received. 
And she heard Dick saying to their great-aunt 
as she held his coat for him to wriggle into it to 
go to school: “ Don’t you think it is always as 
bad as this in America, Aunt Deb, because it isn’t, 
truly.” 

And Aunt Deb laughed her cheery laugh as 
she replied : “ I fancy domestic cyclones blow 
occasionally in all climes, my little lad.” 

“How do you do, Joan?” said Uncle Abner 
as the tall girl entered the library where he stood 
in the farthest corner from the open fire. “ You 
are grown. And you are improving ; you are be- 
ginning to look like your grandmother. Who 
woke you ? ” 

“ Aunt Deb, and things in general, sir, I 
guess,” said Joan, who was used to the old man’s 
methods. “ I’ve been busy, and haven’t had time 
to go to sleep.” 

“ So I hear, so I hear,” said the queer old fel- 
low. “ I came down to see for myself, when your 
father told me he was retrenching this winter, 
and how you had stood by him. I wondered if 


134 Nut-Brown Joan 

one of my old friends’ grandchildren was going 
to amount to something, after all. I never 
thought much of Guy — handsome, bright, no 
backbone. He ought to have been called Abner 
Brodnax — it might have struck in. No one can 
tell how much our names have to do with our 
characters. And Georgie is a dandelion — all 
fluffy, yellow head, hollow stalk. And you were 
a dreamer and a dawdler, always dissatisfied, but 
with not enough spunk to set straight what you 
didn’t like. Dick is forever over a book, and the 
rest too young to talk about.” 

“Trude’s a dear, uncle. You will like Trude; 
she has lots of splendid common sense, and you 
can count on her,” said Joan. 

“ You don’t look happy, girl — hey? ” exclaimed 
Mr. Brodnax, eyeing Joan sharply, and ignoring 
the question of Trude. 

“ I’m tired, and a little lonely and bothered,” 
said Joan simply. She felt that there was some- 
thing kindly about the eccentric old man which 
she had not appreciated before. 

It was two years since she had seen him, and 
then she “ was a little girl,” thought tall Joan, as 


The Defection of Darby 135 

she noted, wondering at it, her feeling of trust in 
Uncle Abner Brodnax. 

“ Lonely ? In this house full of children ? And 
bothered? What should bother a girl of four- 
teen, hey? ” demanded Uncle Abner. 

“ We have no servant, except one good old 
coloured woman, and mama’s sick. Then Georgie 
has three girls staying here, and one of them is 
sick too. And a cousin of mine is spending the 
winter here, and Sonia is — well, of course she’s 
one more. And my best friend never comes to 
see me now, not at all,” Joan burst out, wonder- 
ing at herself. 

“Quarrelled, hey?” said Uncle Abner. 

“ No sir. Til Someone must have made 

mischief. He’s the nicest boy, Uncle Abner ! He’s 
Darley Danforth, but we were such chums that 
Guy called him Darby — Darby and Joan, you 
see — and now we all call him Darby. And 
we promised to be real friends always. And 
now ” 

Joan stopped. 

“ Now he has broken the compact,” finished 
Uncle Abner. “ Hunt him up, and make him 


136 Nut-Brown Joan 

explain. Never let a friendship cool for want of 
a word of explanation, Joan. You will probably 
find it an easy snarl to untangle. An honest boy 
and a frank girl ought to get to the bottom of the 
trouble quickly. I have no patience with the 
false pride that won’t make the first step. Friends 
are scarce and precious, my girl,” said Uncle 
Abner. 

“Thank you, uncle,” said Joan, surprised to 
find herself cheered by the crabbed old fellow she 
had always feared. “ I hope we can make you 
comfortable. I’ll see that you have cereals, but 
things are not very comfortable here now.” 

“ You speak like a housekeeper, Joan,” said 
Uncle Abner, giving Joan another of his keen 
looks. “No wonder your face is thinner and 
sweeter. Are you getting domestic, hey? You 
always aspired to the arts, and to things which 
make a noise in the world.” 

“ Aunt Deb has shown me how nice it is to 
be a homely girl, in the English sense, and how 
good-for-nothing I was. I begin to see, but I 
do get pretty tired of it sometimes,” said Joan 
candidly. “ I only help Aunt Deb ; she keeps 


The Defection of Darby 137 

house for us. You’ll like Aunt Deb; she’s per- 
fectly splendid.” 

A queer expression passed over Uncle Abner 
Brodnax’ face, as he said : “ My girl, I knew 
your Aunt Deborah in England when your grand- 
father married your grandmother, her sister, 
Joan Chisholm, and Deb was no older than your 
Kenneth. She has always been a nugget of pure 
gold, and I am glad to find that you appreciate 
her.” 

A shriek from above, followed by the frantic 
ringing of a bell, brought Joan to her feet. 

“ Oh, that’s Ken — something has happened — 
and mama is ringing for me. I must go. Please 
make yourself as comfortable as you can.” And 
Joan ran away. 

Uncle Abner Brodnax looked after the slender 
flying figure with much interest. 

“ Well, this is a surprise,” he said aloud. “ The 
girl has plenty of character. And she is growing 
handsome. She will be the beauty of the family 
yet — the thin, dark, little ugly duckling! And 
she is clear Chisholm ! I believe, after all, she has 
been fitly named Joan.” 


138 Nut-Brown Joan 

The trouble upstairs proved to be nothing 
more serious than a finger jammed in a refractory 
drawer, and when Joan had kissed and bathed 
it, Ken’s howls of anguish gradually sobbed into 
silence. 

On her way to the dining-room at lunch time 
Joan met Trude just coming home from school. 
“ I’ve been thinking, Joan,” said that sensible 
young person, speaking out of the middle of her 
thoughts, as was her custom, “ how silly it is for 
you and Darby not to be friends when no one’s 
mad, and nothing’s happened. Why don’t you 
go ask him what ails him ? ” 

“ That’s just what Uncle Abner Brodnax said, 
Trude,” said Joan, and added, as the little girl 
stared in amazement at Uncle Abner’s knowing 
anything about her troubles: “ You wouldn’t 
mind showing you cared, would you ? ” 

“ If you like being friends you ought not to 
like not being friends,” said Trude sensibly, if 
not very lucidly. “ I call that silly. If you and 
Darby are chums you ought not to let him go on 
thinking whatever he’s thinking. You ought to 
ask him what it is and tell him it isn’t so.” 


The Defection of Darby 139 

Joan laughed at this illuminating speech, but 
she understood quite well its purport, and entirely 
agreed with it. She kissed Trude’s cold red 
cheeks, and said: “ Til do it Trudie, right away.” 


CHAPTER X 


JOAN’S WINTER TURNS TO GLORIOUS 
SUMMER 

OAN in her long brown coat and 
soft brown beaver hat with its 
twist of golden silk, and the 
touch of gold at her throat which 
her neckerchief gave, started out 
on the following morning to save her friendship 
with Darby. She was free, having carried up her 
mother’s and Blanche’s breakfasts, and set to 
right the confusion which seemed to follow like 
a trail on the footsteps of all the big girls. 

Uncle Abner Brodnax’ eccentric breakfast had 
given her much uneasiness. The old gentleman 
was particularly trying — Joan mentally called it 
“ cranky ” — that morning. He complained of 

draughts where none could possibly creep in, 
found his cup of hot milk, which was his substi- 
tute for coffee, lukewarm when Joan had taken 
special pains that it should be steaming hot ; said 
140 



Joan’s Winter Turns to Summer 141 

that his cereal was underdone, and his bread at 
least one day too new, and grumbled so much 
that his dismayed little hostess longed to flee. 

But he had asked particularly to have her attend 
him alone, so she stuck to her guns which — meta- 
phorically — she spiked, for she contrived to keep 
her impatience out of sight with nothing more 
tell-tale than very red cheeks to betray her irri- 
tation. 

She did not see the sharp glances which Uncle 
Abner gave her as she answered gently, and 
served him patiently, nor the twinkle of fun in 
the half-closed eyes as he scored her best efforts 
to please him, and pushed away cups and bowls 
with their infantine contents half eaten. 

At last, tired and discouraged, Joan set forth, 
wondering how and where she should find Darby, 
and what she should say to him. She made it on 
her way to go through her arbor vitae bower for 
a bit of heartening from her life-long friend. 
Tall girl of fourteen though Joan was, she still 
played at making believe, and the fancy that had 
been dearest to her all her life was that her little 
bower was the home of a dryad, who lived just at 


142 Nut-Brown Joan 

its entrance, imprisoned in a maple of especially 
beautiful form. 

To this dryad she had always taken her griefs, 
confiding them to her as she rested her thin little 
brown face against the tree trunk, whispering her 
childish sorrows, and much cheered in return by 
the whispered wisdom of the dryad, murmur- 
ing through the leaves her love for lonely little 
Joan. 

She had never told anyone her pretty fancy, 
but she remained true to the dryad, and still talked 
matters over with her. So to-day she went to her 
for encouragement before seeking Darby, though 
the wintry winds had stripped the maple, and 
Joan was forced to hear the dryad’s monitions 
with only the inward ear. 

A step on the soft brown carpet spread by the 
arbor vitae and pine trees made Joan glance 
around the maple tree against which her cheek 
rested as it had rested in her confidences to the 
dryad — though at varying heights — since her 
eighth year. 

There, coming into her arbour from the rear, 
was Darby! He stood still at the sight of Joan, 


Joan’s Winter Turns to Summer 143 

but Joan rushed toward him with a glad cry, 
holding out both hands. 

“ Oh, Darby, is it you ? I was going to look 
for you,” she cried, as delighted to think that her 
friend had come to her before she had sought him 
as she was to see him again. 

“Hallo, Joan! I was looking you up,” re- 
sponded Darby, embarrassed by the unexpected 
encounter, but glad enough to see Joan, and feel- 
ing certain as he took her eager hands and looked 
into her honest brown eyes that “ J. was all 
right,” as he put it to himself, and that he had 
been worse than foolish to believe ill of her. 

“ I wanted to know — have you been mad with 
me, Darby? ” asked Joan, tucking a hand up each 
sleeve with the two-fold intent of keeping them 
warm and of disposing of them. 

“ Well, I guess I’ve been a large-sized chump,” 
said Darby, hating to own up, though he had 
hunted up Joan expressly to do so. 

“ It’s been ever since that day when Ken tum- 
bled down and I couldn’t go driving when you 
came for me, and you took Tillie Tyler in my 
place,” suggested Joan. 


144 Nut-Brown Joan 

“ Now look here, J., I didn’t take her exactly/’ 
interrupted Darby eagerly. “ I don’t want to be 
mean and shove things off on a girl, but she asked 
me if I minded taking her to Rand’s to get some 
letter paper, and how could I say I minded? 
Then when we got down there — well, she just 
stayed in — that’s all ! Said she guessed she’d get 
the paper later, and I’d better take my drive. And 
I couldn’t dump her — like ashes! Besides, my 
cart doesn’t tip up, like an ash cart,” added 
Darby, with his twinkle of fun. “ But I did let 
her walk home from the church.” 

“ So that’s how Tillie got that drive! ” Joan’s 
nose had been tilting higher as she listened, and 
she gave her chin a decided hitch as she spoke. 
“ Hope she enjoyed it! But that doesn’t explain 
why you haven’t been here.” 

“ No,” said Darby slowly. “Look here, Joan; 
did you ever see this ? ” And drawing a sheet of 
paper from his pocket he unrolled it and handed 
it to his friend. 

Joan looked at it and laughed. It was a spirited 
and humorous sketch of a horse, prancing in 
spite of bandaged legs and protruding ribs, and a 


Joan’s Winter Turns to Summer 145 

rider, elbow and knees out, clinging for dear life 
to the poor beast’s emaciated neck, his hat 
pressed on the back of his head, while he bran- 
dished his whip and used his spurs. From his lips, 
in a gigantic pear, issued the words : “ I am a true 
lover of the horse, and my new one has blood.” 

“ Yes, I’ve seen it; how did you come by it?” 
said Joan. 

“ Tillie gave it to me,” said Darby. “ What 
did you mean it for? ” 

“I mean it for!” echoed Joan. “I never 
meant it for anything. What did Tillie tell you 
when she gave it to you ? ” 

“ She had been talking about you — I don’t re- 
member how it began, nor what she said,” Darby 
said slowly. “ But she seemed to be hinting you 
weren’t so much of a friend to me behind my 
back as I thought, and that you made fun of me. 
I wasn’t paying any attention to her — only think- 
ing I wished she was in Halifax — till she gave 
me a hint of some picture of me you had made.” 

“ I made! ” exclaimed Joan. 

Darby nodded. “ So I got curious to see it, 
but she said she couldn’t show it to me — it would 


146 Nut-Brown Joan 

be mean to you, and would only make me mad. 
So I — I know I was a chump; I said so in the 
beginning — I tried to get it, and she kept holding 
it off, yet all the time letting me see more ” 

“ I know! ” interjected Joan, with a dangerous 
look. 

“ Well, anyhow, at last she showed me this 
drawing, and said you made it for me on Ab- 
dallah, and that you laughed at me, and said you 
guessed I needn’t think you were so anxious to 
ride behind my forlorn nag,” said Darby, with a 
shamed glance at Joan as he saw her crimson 
cheeks and the proud, hurt look around her lips. 

“ And you believed all that ! ” she said, turning 
away as the tears, which she could not keep back, 
rolled down on her golden neckerchief. 

“ It made me mad — so mad I had to believe it 
at that moment, and then I got ashamed to come, 
and sort of stuffy,” said poor Darby huskily. It 
was dreadful to see plucky Joan shed tears. “I 
was an awful chump — chumpier even than I saw 
when I started out. I hope you’ll forgive me, 
Joan.” 

“ I couldn’t draw anything half as good as that 


Joan’s Winter Turns to Summer 147 

to begin with,” said Joan trying to speak steadily. 
“ Trude did that — Trude’s a genius. She made 
it for Mr. Miller. He pretends his horses are fine 
stock, and they aren’t; and he pretends he loves 
horses dearly, and he half starves and beats them 
— so Trude drew that. I couldn’t do anything 
so clever ; you ought to have known that.” 

“ Or so mean as to poke fun of me behind my 
back. You won’t say anything about that, Joan,” 
said Darby humbly. “ There isn’t any excuse for 
me, only I got mad, and didn’t stop to think — you 
know how quick I am — you are too, Joan. So I 
stayed away and sulked awhile. Then I thought 
how contemptible I was to take that story, and 
never give you a chance to speak for yourself, and 
I made up my mind I wouldn’t be such a dunce, 
and so unjust to you one more day, so here I am. 
I never could tell you how sorry and mean I feel, 
but — won’t you try to forgive me, J. ? ” 

Joan put her long brown fingers into the square 
hand extended to her, and shook it heartily. 
“ That’s all right, Darby,” she said. “ Very 
likely I should have done the same. I won’t mind, 
as long as you don’t believe it of me now, but 


148 Nut-Brown Joan 

there's no use asking me to forgive that Tillie, 
because I can’t." 

“ I wouldn’t ask it, for one," said Darby 
grimly. “ I wish she were a boy — I’d teach her 
a few things — give her some object lessons, you 
know." And he doubled his fists suggestively. 

“ I won’t do anything to harm her, or get 
square with her, but that’s the most I can say; I 
don’t want to see her or hear her voice again," 
said Joan, with vigour. 

“ Well, I think when a person has shown her- 
self so treacherous and mean, and has told 
downright whoppers, no one ought to have any- 
thing to do with her — unless she shows she’s 
fearfully sorry, and tries to turn over a new leaf. 
And even then I’m afraid of anyone who doesn’t 
tell the truth. No tricky ones for me, please ! " 
said Darby. 

“ You don’t know what a comfort it is to get 
you back, Darb," said Joan, as her recovered chum 
“ turned them both into milk jugs," as he said, 
by locking arms and thrusting his hands into his 
ulster pockets, while Joan’s were cosily tucked 
away in her sleeves. 


Joan’s Winter Turns to Summer 149 

“ It has been terribly lonely and horrid not to 
see you, and know you must be mad, and have 
everything going at sixes and sevens in the 
house." 

“ I’m no end sorry, J.," said Darby, with a con- 
trite pressure of her elbow. 

“ That's settled," said Joan quickly. “ It's 
wiped out." 

“ What has been going crazy ? " asked Darby, 
acknowledging her grace with a grateful look. 

“ Me — I — chiefly," laughed Joan. “ Mama 
and Blanche Horsley have been sick at the same 
time, and then Uncle Abner Brodnax is there." 

“Who?" asked Darby. And Joan told the 
story of her unrelated uncle and her other trials, 
and the tale lasted until they had reached the 
house. 

At the door they paused. “ Aren't you coming 
in? " said Joan. 

“ Not this time. Will you go with me for that 
drive to-morrow morning, J. ?" asked Darby, 
well pleased to see how happy Joan's face was, 
and that she had chatted herself into a merry 
mood. 


150 Nut-Brown Joan 

“ Make it afternoon and I will,” said Joan 
blithely. “ To-morrow’s sweeping day, and I 
must dust. I’m going to keep this drawing — I 
may use it,” she added. 

“ Gracious ! I don’t want it ! ” exclaimed Dar- 
by. “ Sure you forgive me ? There’s no use say- 
ing any more about being ashamed of myself.” 

“ Of course I forgive you, and I’m ’most sure 
I’d have been fooled just as you were,” said Joan 
generously. “ Don’t worry ; it’s all over, and I 
couldn’t be so happy now to be chums with you 
again if I had had you all along.” 

“ You’re a fine fellow, J. ; I won’t forget the 
kind of friend you’ve proved to-day,” said Darby 
fervently. “ To-morrow afternoon, then, you’ll 
try Abdallah. How’s Ban-Ban ? ” he called back 
from halfway down the walk, as Joan stood on 
the steps watching him. 

“ Handsomer, and belongs more to the Bandar- 
log people than ever. He’s getting dreadfully 
mischievous, but he’s a dear — I’m thankful you 
saved him,” Joan called back, and then, waving 
here hand for good-bye, dashed up the steps and 
slammed the door so joyously that a derby hat of 


Joan’s Winter Turns to Summer 151 

her father’s danced off the hat rack and all down 
the hall. Aunt Deb came out of the library to dis- 
cover the cause of the commotion, and found Joan 
with her coat hanging off her shoulders, while 
with both hands behind her back she shook herself 
out of it. 

“You came in like the entire Light Brigade 
charging, my dear,” said Aunt Deb. “ Was that 
Darby I saw going away?” 

“ Yes, auntie, it was my dear old Darby. He’s 
turned up again, and I’m so glad!” cried Joan 
rapturously. 

“ I am very glad too, my dear. What was 
wrong with him?” said Aunt Deb. 

“ I must tell you, I think ; someone ought to 
know about it besides Trudie and me,” said Joan, 
pushing her hair back from her face with both 
hands. “ Was there anyone in there with 
you?” 

“No, I was quite alone. Come in, my Nut- 
Brown Maiden,” said Aunt Deb, leading the way 
into the library, with an affectionate look at her 
tall grand-niece. 

Joan followed, and seated herself in her fa- 


152 Nut-Brown Joan 

vourite big chair. But she no longer lounged in 
it as she had on the day when Aunt Deb inspired 
her with a desire for English homeliness. In- 
stead, she sat erect and her eyes were not only 
sparkling with the indignation of the moment, 
but were kindled into interest in all around her. 
The listlessness of the delicately oval face was 
gone, and in its place was animation, sweetness, 
an expression of fulness of living. 

“ Now tell me,” said Aunt Deb, taking up her 
sewing. Aunt Deb never sat with hands idle, 
and Joan told her story of Tillie’s treachery, 
producing Trude’s caricature at the close. 

“You see, Aunt Deb, it really wasn’t a little 
thing,” Joan ended. “ She set out deliberately 
to make trouble between Darby and me, and to 
do it she told him what wasn’t true, and what 
she knew wasn’t true. The queer part is that 
it couldn’t do her any good, if only because she 
was to be here such a short time. Why in the 
world do you suppose she did do it?” 

“ For pure malice, apparently,” said Aunt Deb 
sternly. “There are people who love harmful 
mischief. But it is certainly, as you say, not a 


Joan’s Winter Turns to Summer 153 

trifle. If you will leave this sketch with me I will 
consider what would best be done — such treach- 
ery must not pass unrebuked. Contemptible as 
such an action is, it is worse that it was com- 
mitted against a daughter of the house in which 
she was a guest. Tillie is not a fit companion 
for Georgie. Leave me the sketch, Joan, and 
put the matter out of your mind, as it is now 
out of your hands. I am glad that you told me 
of it, and very glad that you and Darby are 
friends again, though, of course, no lasting harm 
could have been done by what was, after all, a 
stupid piece of malice.” 

Joan arose, feeling herself dismissed. “ I 
must find Trudie and tell her it’s all right; she’s 
been a great comfort these horrid days,” she 
said as she left the room. 

Miss Chisholm, armed with the sketch, went 
straight to Mrs. Darrington’s room. 

“ Listen to this little tale of petty girlish spite 
and trickiness which I have to relate, Fanny,” 
she said, drawing her chair beside the fire where 
Mrs. Darrington sat reading. And Aunt Deb 
in turn related the story of Tillie’s wrong-doing, 


1 54 


Nut-Brown Joan 

a story to which Mrs. Darrington listened with 
amazed disgust. 

“ It’s a great pity that Georgie should have 
such a girl as this for a companion,” said Aunt 
Deb as she finished. 

“It is shocking!” cried Mrs. Darrington. 
“ Really I am horrified ! Such a pretty young girl 
and with such sweet ways ! Of all things to tell 
falsehoods, and to try to deprive Joan of her 
friend! And as you say, to think such a girl 
should be a friend to my sweet, pretty, dainty 
Georgie! I am shocked. What shall we do 
about it, Aunt Deborah?” 

“If I were you I should write a few lines to 
each of these girls, asking them to curtail their 
visit, pleading your illness, which has made it 
difficult to entertain them at all. It will not be 
unjust to include them all in the dismissal, for 
I have watched them closely, and I’m much mis- 
taken if there’s a sixpence worth of difference 
between them — they are all poor comrades for 
Georgie. But I will see to it that this Tillie fully 
understands the reason for her dismissal. When 
Georgie hears how badly her guest has requited 


Joan’s Winter Turns to Summer 155 

our hospitality, I hope and think she will drop 
the acquaintance.” 

“It is a disagreeable necessity, but I suppose 
it is necessary,’' sighed Mrs. Darrington, draw- 
ing her writing materials toward her. “I can- 
not tolerate deceit — none of our children is in 
the least deceitful. I will write the notes, aunt, 
and you can see that the girls leave comfortably, 
but at once.” 

“I will speed their parting, never fear,” said 
Aunt Deb, folding her lips determinedly in pre- 
cisely the way Joan had of doing it. Aunt Deb 
hated untruths and loved her “ nut-brown 
maiden ” well. The combination of senti- 
ments made her strongly resolute to see justice 
carried out on Tillie. 

Guy, Joan, Dick, and Trude, seated in the nur- 
sery that evening, heard excited, shrill girl voices, 
Georgie sobbing, Sonia expostulating, and Aunt 
Deb’s rich throaty contralto curbing the tumult 
and speaking decisively. 

“What’s up?” asked Guy lazily, not caring 
much for a reply. 

Joan and Trude glanced at each other, and did 


156 Nut-Brown Joan 

not answer. “I shouldn’t wonder if aunty were 
giving them what for,” whispered Trude happily. 
Joan nudged her with a beamingly joyous look 
that was more human than saintly. 

A little later Joan and Trude started for the 
chamber which they now shared. In the hall 
they met Uncle Abner Brodnax. 

“ So you are clearing the fungus — the things 
that hate sunshine and love mould and shadow 
— from your path, are you, Joan Chisholm Dar- 
rington? You and Aunt Deb between you, 
hey?” he said, scowling so fearfully into Joan’s 
face that round little Trude cowered still lower. 

But Joan, whose eyes were nearly on a level 
with the old gentleman’s own, looked fearlessly 
into them. “ I don’t know what you mean,” she 
said. 

“ Don’t you ? I am going home in the morn- 
ing. Don’t you consider me fungus, hey ? ” said 
Mr. Brodnax. 

“ No, sir; you are — you are too crisp,” laughed 
Joan, for somehow the queer old man did not 
frighten her just then, and she half believed that 
he was glad to see her face brighter. 


Joan’s Winter Turns to Summer 157 

“You impertinent lass!” cried Uncle Abner. 
“Wait until morning, only wait till morning!” 
And with this menacing and mysterious remark 
he disappeared through his bedroom door, leav- 
ing Joan and Trude to go on their way specu- 
lating. 


CHAPTER XI 


SPEEDING THE PARTING GUESTS 

HE very first thing in the morn- 
ing Joan discovered what it was 
for which Uncle Abner Brodnax 
had bid her wait. Coming down 
a little late she found three suit 
cases, strapped and with accompanying umbrellas 
laid across them, sitting in the hall. 

“ Oh, my ! ” she exclaimed in irrepressible rap- 
ture. “ Those girls must be going home, and 
that is what Uncle Abner meant. What a per- 
fect darling Aunt Deb is ! ” 

Vera nodded to Joan as she entered the dining- 
room, Blanche said good-morning, remembering 
the many steps Joan had cheerfully taken for 
her while she was ill, but Tillie regarded her 
with a haughty stare, and with all the strength 
of dislike usually felt by the perpetrator of a 
wrong toward its victim. 

158 



Speeding the Parting Guests 159 

Guy gave his sister an unholy wink of con- 
gratulation and rejoicing, while Georgie choked 
over her coffee, her pretty face suffused with 
tears, her fluffy hair falling disconsolately, and 
her rather shallow wits completely scattered be- 
tween her liking for her friends who flattered 
her, her mortification at Tillie’s proving so un- 
worthy, and her disgust at the offence — for with 
all her folly Georgie had the family regard for 
truth. 

Joan ate her breakfast with the calmness that 
could afford to smile at trifles. With jubilant 
heart she realised that there was no more picking 
up and setting straight to be done for these three 
irresponsible guests; that there were no more 
snubs to be borne, and that only Sonia — less 
troublesome, after all, than the rest — would be 
left to annoy her. Household tasks, thus sud- 
denly lightened, looked pleasant and easy, and 
Joan felt like singing as she ate, following the 
example of Bandersnatch-Bandarlog, who always 
took his meals sandwiched with loudest purrs. 

Vera and Blanche bade Joan good-bye as they 
left the dining-room, but Tillie stalked silently 


160 Nut-Brown Joan 

and rigidly away, fortunately to return no 
more. 

“Uncle Abner’s going now, Joan; he said for 
me to call you,” said Henley, poking his head 
through the dining-room door. 

“Dear me; I forgot all about that,” said Joan, 
giving her lips a hasty wipe, and taking a last 
swallow of water. 

“Well, I made you a good deal of trouble, 
Joan Chisholm, hey?” said Uncle Abner as she 
ran down the hall. 

“Only just enough, sir,” laughed Joan. 
Somehow she had lost her fear of this eccentric 
adopted relative, and even felt that there was espe- 
cial kindness for her hiding under his gruffness. 

“You needn’t mind saying so; I tried to,” 
Uncle Abner retorted. “You have borne with 
me very well and are proving to have excellent 
material in you; I begin to hope you will be 
worthy of being called Joan Chisholm. I feared 
you would grow up into one of the new-fangled 
women who go about crowing on fences, instead 
of clucking about their own affairs and feeding 
the chickens. But I am well pleased with you, 


Speeding the Parting Guests 161 

Joan, and I think you will amount to something 
— I have been trying you and watching you. 
Don’t forget that a true woman, sweet and wom- 
anly, was the last, best gift God made the world 
when it was new. I think you’re in a fair way 
of getting the right sort of homeliness. Good- 
bye, my girl; I hope you may remember your 
crabbed old adopted uncle and his visit more 
pleasantly some day.” 

“ Why, I like you ever so much now, Uncle 
Abner, and I shall always remember you pleas- 
antly! And I’m very glad you don’t think as 
badly of me now as you did,” said Joan, holding 
out both hands in farewell. 

Uncle Abner bent forward to kiss her brown 
cheek. “ Good-bye, Joan Chisholm, and God 
keep you,” he said. 

Something in his face and voice made Joan’s 
eyes fill. She kissed him heartily, amazed to find 
herself sincerely sorry to see the last of queer 
old Abner Brodnax. 

But this was a morning when everything was 
smiling, and Joan’s brief moment of regret at 
parting gave way to the recollection that Darby 



1 62 Nut-Brown Joan 

was coming to give her, at last, her promised 
drive behind Abdallah. She flew blithely about 
her tasks, hurrying to be ready when Darby 
came, and if she shook the pillows on the bed 
which Tillie had occupied a little harder than 
was necessary, and executed a dance of triumph 
before the mirror which had reflected Tillie’s 
pretty, though crafty face, perhaps she was not 
very blameworthy. 

Joan was ready at least half an hour ‘before 
Darby could possibly get there, but at last he 
came — earlier on his part too than he had prom- 
ised — and Joan drew a long breath of perfect 
joy as Abdallah started off at a pace that seemed 
to indicate his knowledge of the length of Joan’s 
weary waiting for his coming. 

Darby was almost as glad as Joan herself 
when he heard that Tillie and her comrades had 
departed, and expressed his pleasure in such for- 
cible w^>rds that it was like cordial to Joan’s 
heart, stftl a bit sore over his temporary mistrust 
of her. The second Darby and Joan renewed 
their compact of chumship, which no distrust, 
nor mischiefm^er, was ever again to impair. 


Speeding the Parting Guests 163 

A cold, wintry rain set in that afternoon, and 
Sonia, Guy, Trude, Dick, and Georgie — the latter 
decidedly pensive — sat around the fire in the 
library with Joan. 

Joan was busy cutting bits of cloth of all 
colours into queer shapes, and basting triangles, 
cubes, squares, circles and combinations of these 
figures on white backgrounds, or reversing the 
order, and putting white geometrical figures on 
coloured backgrounds. Guy watched her lazily, 
Sonia rather contemptuously, while Trude eyed 
the process with the profound admiration which 
she always gave her elder and gifted sister. 

Dick across the room was conning his lessons 
amid the silence. Suddenly he shut his book 
with a slam. 

“If those Germans don’t get decent letters I 
think we ought to go to war with them,” he 
declared. “ Great clumsy, heavy black things, 
all alike! Our teacher made us translate some- 
thing a poet named Goethe ” — he pronounced it 
Gertie — 44 said : 4 Alle guten Dingen sind drei.’ 
It means : 4 All good things are three,’ but I think 
the 4 drei ’ is English — not German — because 


164 Nut-Brown Joan 

good things are dreadfully dry, or horrid to 
take. I’m sure German is dry enough ! ” 

“ I love German, Diccon,” said Joan, laugh- 
ing. “ I only wish I could go on with it ; Aunt 
Deb thinks I can begin lessons regularly after 
New Year.” 

“I finished German,” announced Sonia. “I 
thought I might take up Spanish, and maybe go 
out to teach those poor Filipinos.” 

“ You’d never give them any medals at your 
school,” said Guy. “ You’d hang them all on 
yourself. What on earth are you doing there, 
J. ? I’ve been watching you fuss over those rags 
all this time, but I can’t make out your idea. It 
isn’t crazy patchwork, is it, Not but what it’s 
crazy enough!” 

“They are going to be signal flags. Darby 
and I are going to make up a code, and run up 
flags every day. I shall make all the kinds I 
can, and then we’re going to fit words to them. 
Isn’t that a beauty?” And Joan triumphantly 
held up a pleasing yellow flannel ground deco- 
rated with a blue crescent. 

“ That means : * The sultan has the small-pox.’ 


Speeding the Parting Guests 165 

Yellow small-pox flag with the Turkish cres- 
cent. Don’t quite see why you’ll need it, though,” 
said Guy. 

“You can’t see Darby’s house from here, nor 
he ours; what’s the good of signals?” asked 
Georgie. 

“We shall fix them on poles at the back of 
this house, and on poles near the pond at his. 
Then he will see mine when he goes to the store 
or the post office, and I can see his from my 
bower,” said Joan. 

“ Why can’t we go on with the Secret Society, 
and all of us use the signals — have them for the 
society,” said Dick, to whom the parti-coloured 
scraps, with their vast possibilities for secret com- 
munications, were proving alluring. 

Joan glanced hastily at Sonia, fearing that an 
allusion to the enterprise which had revealed her 
dishonour might be embarrassing to her, but 
seeing that her cousin looked quite unmoved she 
said: “Nobody but you and Trude seemed to 
care about the Knights, so Darby and I thought 
we’d go on alone. Not exactly with that society, 
but doing things by ourselves,” she added hastily, 


1 66 Nut-Brown Joan 

seeing Guy about to make fun of a secret society 
of two members. 

“I wonder where Hen and Ken are,” said 
Trude irrelevantly, according to her usual cus- 
tom, following her own train of thought while 
the rest were talking. 

“ With Brosie. That’s so, Trude; I ought to 
fetch them; Brosie will be busy getting dinner,” 
said Joan, jumping up with a sigh for her inter- 
esting work, and another for her own forget- 
fulness. “It does seem to me I can’t remember 
one single thing lately.” 

She ran out of the room, wishing that Georgie 
or Sonia would share her responsibilities long 
enough to let her go on making signal flags. 

Presently she returned with a startled face. 
“ Georgie, Guy,” she said. “ I can’t find Ken 
anywhere. Henley is with mama, but they don’t 
know where Ken is — they thought we had him. 
Hurry up — look for him.” 

“Oh, he’ll turn up; he’s in mischief some- 
where,” said Guy, rising slowly. “ Queer he left 
Hen out of it, though. Where shall I look?” 

“ Goodness ! What would be the use of look- 


Speeding the Parting Guests 167 

ing if we knew that?” asked Joan impatiently. 
“ Mama says get out your wheel and go about 
the neighbourhood.” 

“Nice weather to take out a wheel a fellow’s 
just cleaned!” grumbled Guy. “What a nui- 
sance kids are!” 

“It’s not so long since we were all ‘kids,’” 
retorted Joan. “You must look too, Georgie, 
and Sonia, and Dick and Trude — everybody; 
mama is frightened.” 

“Nothing to be frightened about; of course 
he’s somewhere in the house,” said Georgie. 
“ But come on, Sonia.” 

“ Presently ; I’m finishing this story ; I’ll come 
when it’s done,” said Sonia, turning a page of 
her magazine quite calmly. 

Thorough search of the house failed to reveal 
little Ken’s whereabouts. Mrs. Darrington was 
almost in hysterics, Georgie was shaken out of 
her indifference, Trude was crying, Dick pale 
and silent, Joan wildly excited, her dark eyes 
snapping, while even lazy Guy pulled on his 
boots and got out his shining wheel very readily. 
Only Sonia, forgotten in the library, had begun 


1 68 Nut-Brown Joan 

another story, and took no share in the general 
disturbance. 

“ The child has gone out/’ said Aunt Deb, 
coming into Mrs. Darrington’s room. “ His 
little cap and coat are gone, but his neckerchief 
and, worst of all, his shoes are in the nursery. 
He must be trotting about in the rain with only 
his slippers on.” 

“Oh, my poor, poor baby!” sobbed his dis- 
tracted mother. “He will have croup or pneu- 
monia; it will kill him!” 

Henley burst into a roar of anguish. “ I told 
him, I told him,” he screamed. 

Joan pounced on him instantly. “What did 
you tell him? Where is he? Do you know?” 
she demanded, giving the child a little shake. 

“No, I don’t know, Joan — I don’t. I told 
him not to make New Year’s calls to-day, and he 
would go, but I don’t know where he is,” wailed 
Henley. 

“New Year’s calls!” echoed everybody in 
various notes of amazement. 

“But it isn’t New Year’s, Hen, not for two 
weeks yet,” said Trude. 


Speeding the Parting Guests 169 

“ I know it ; I told him, but he said never mind, 
'cause he’d betend it was, and he went,” said 
Henley. 

“ Then hasten, Guy ; he has gone to someone’s 
house. Go to Mrs. Maddern’s — or — no. Oh, 
I don’t know — where would he be likely to go 
first ? ” cried poor Mrs. Darrington. “ It doesn’t 
matter; wherever he is he will be wet and chilled 
to his little heart.” 

Guy lost no time in getting into his coat after 
Henley had disclosed this clue to the youngest’s 
movements. But just as he was mounting his 
wheel Darby, on Abdallah, turned in at the gate, 
and before him on the saddle, rolled like a grub 
in a big grey shawl, was Kenneth. 

A shout of welcome hailed this arrival, and 
Joan threw her weight on the bannisters and slid 
down on her side, followed in the same manner 
by Trude, while Dick slid down in the more natu- 
ral way to which the girls would have been quite 
equal had propriety allowed it; all three felt 
running downstairs much too slow a method 
of reaching the front door. 

“ Oh, Darby, we might have known you’d save 


170 Nut-Brown Joan 

him ! ” cried Joan, rushing out, heedless of wind 
or rain. “ Save him as you did Ban-Ban ! ” 

“He’s almost as wet,” said Darby, handing 
down his capture. “I found him when I was 
going by the pond on an errand for mother. 
Mother wrapped him up. I took him home to 
get Abdallah — but I’m afraid he’s pretty cold.” 

“ By the pond ! Had he really wandered so 
far?” cried Aunt Deb, receiving the damp hero 
of the hour from Joan. “Come in, dear boy, 
and get warm and dry yourself, while we try to 
thank you.” 

“ No, thanks, Miss Chisholm ; I don’t dare risk 
Abdallah — he’s thinner skinned than I am,” said 
Darby. 

“We’re no end obliged to you, Darby,” said 
Guy. 

“ I should think we were ! ” cried Joan. “ But 
I might have known you’d come to the rescue ! ” 

“ Oh, that’s all right ! I couldn’t help meeting 
the scamp. Do you think slippers the best foot- 
gear for this weather? He says he was going 
to make New Year’s calls on those girls across 
the pond Joan knows. I’ll be over to-morrow 


Speeding the Parting Guests 171 

to see how he is. Mother’s afraid he may be 
sick. Good-night, everybody.” And Darby rode 
away. 

Kenneth was treated with a hot bath and hot 
milk, and tucked up under plenty of blankets. 
Joan stayed with the wanderer while the rest 
dined. 

“ What made you pay New Year’s calls to-day, 
Kenneth?” she asked. “No, don’t put out your 
arms, dearie. Didn’t you know it wasn’t New 
Year’s? ” 

“I’m so hot, J.,” murmured Ken hoarsely. 
“ I just betended ’twas New Year’s. Papa said 
last night he was sorry they didn’t do New 
Year’s calls now, so I played ’twas New Year’s, 
and wented. I thought I’d go too far,” — Ken- 
neth always called long distances “ too far,” — 
“but I forgot my shoes and rubsers, and I was 
cold; then Darby came. I’m hot now, J. My 
froat hurts me.” 

Aunt Deb hastened upstairs without waiting 
for dessert, and looked anxiously at the pretty, 
flushed face on the pillow. 

“I think I’ll let the doctor make sure that 


172 Nut-Brown Joan 

we’ve done the best we can for him,” she said 
to Joan, whose dilating eyes searched her face 
eagerly, catching alarm from what she read 
there. 

“ Is Doctor Dear coming?” asked Ken slowly 
raising his heavy eyelids. He called Doctor 
Dean, his great friend, “Doctor Dear.” 

“Yes, Kenneth; very soon,” said Aunt Deb. 

“I’d like to have him make my rubber Billy- 
Boy be vaccinationed. Tell Ban, Joan, not to purr 
so loud in my ears — they’s roaring,” murmured 
Ken. 

“Yes,” said Joan, as Aunt Deb nodded; she 
was so frightened that she could hardly frame 
the word. 

“Tell Ban never mind — maybe ’tain’t purring 
— maybe it’s bees — I love Banny-Ban,” said Ken 
wearily, evidently anxious not to hurt Bander- 
snatch-Bandarlog’s feelings. “ Roses have bees 
on them. Once a bee on a rose stung me, and 

Joan cut it out, and I cried, and then Give 

me a drink ; please give me one drink ! ” 

“ He means thorns ; he always said that thorn 
was a bee,” whispered Joan, as Aunt Deb raised 


Speeding the Parting Guests 173 

the soft curly-haired little head on her arm and 
held water to the eager lips. “ He’s delirious — 
a little — isn’t he, auntie? Is he going to be very 
sick?” 

Aunt Deborah smiled cheerfully. “ Little 
people are likely to be a bit flighty when they 
are feverish. Don’t be frightened, Joan. But 
yes; I think our baby may be rather sharply ill 
— it would be strange if he weren’t, after such 
an exposure and wetting.” 


CHAPTER XII 


THE SIGNAL CODE 

ITTLE KENNETH was indeed 
“sharply ill.” The croup which 
at first Mrs. Darrington and Aunt 
Deb feared, and finally hoped for 
as a lesser evil, did not come, but • 
in its place a severe lung cold, threatening pneu- 
monia. A trained nurse was installed to battle 
for Ken with the danger, and all the household 
hung upon the quickened breath and uncertain 
heart beats of the sick child. 

Joan hovered about his room through the day, 
and often arose at night to listen at his door, 
tortured by her fears. Georgie cried a great 
deal, and went about with a worn Windsor tie 
of Kenneth’s loosely and sentimentally knotted 
around her throat. She talked constantly of 
their “ darling baby ” in such a chastened, hope- 
less, yet resigned way that Joan longed to shake 
i74 



The Signal Code 175 

her. But she was even less use than usual in the 
additional burdens the baby’s sickness and the 
presence of the trained nurse laid upon the family 
shoulders. Joan could not for the life of her 
help wishing that Georgie would lay aside Ken’s 
old tie and don an apron, though at times she 
felt as though she were almost heartless beside 
her sister’s fluent grief. 

As to Sonia, she made no pretence of grieving. 
Assuming from the start that Kenneth was cer- 
tain to recover, she did not think it worth while 
to share the family’s anxiety nor to disturb 
herself to help in the labour it entailed. In- 
deed, she took this propitious time to begin 
writing a novel, at which Joan’s wrath boiled 
over. 

“ She’s cured me of dawdling,” she declared 
to Darby, her pillar of reliance during these hard 
days. “I used to want to write and to be a 
bookworm — I declare Sonia makes me wish I 
had never learned to read! Just think of being 
so heartless, with dear little Ken so ill, and all 
of us worried ’most crazy!” 

“ I don’t believe learning to read did it, Joan,” 


176 Nut-Brown Joan 

laughed Darby. “ Sonia would be Sonia if she 
couldn’t read a letter on a billboard. And you’d 
be you, too, I guess, whether you loved books 
or ploughing. Besides, you know Sonia doesn’t 
really love books — she’s forever acting ; she 
thinks it’s nice to be intellectual. And all the 
humbug in the world couldn’t cure you of your 
love for reading. How’s Ken to-day?” 

“Oh, I don’t know! He’s dreadfully sick, 
I’m afraid. He is so little to be threatened with 

pneumonia ! If he has it he will ” Joan broke 

off, unable to utter the fatal word. 

“ He won’t have it,” declared Darby stoutly. 

“Oh, you are such a comfort, Darby!” cried 
Joan, unreasonably cheered by this not precisely 
authoritative dictum. 

“ Look here ; let’s make our flags useful,” cried 
Darby, with an inspiration. “ We haven’t fixed 
up the code yet, but let’s decide on a few signals. 
If Ken is worse — or anything — and you want 
me, hang up the plain red flag — that’s always a 
danger signal.” 

“Then let’s choose another; we don’t want 
our code like other people’s,” said Joan. “I’ll 


The Signal Code 177 

run up the blue one — plain blue — because I’ll 
be just plain blue myself.” 

“All right. And use the green one for good 
news, because green is the colour of hope,” said 
Darby. 

“Yes, and when there’s no change I’ll run up 
white — a flag of truce,” said Joan. 

“ That’s O. K. We’ll let that yellow flag with 
the blue crescent stand for Abdallah; his name 
is Arabian — that’s nearly Turkish,” said Darby 
“ Now then : The blue flag means bad news, and 
— oh, say ! Let’s use the plain red for * Come ! ’ 
If you run that up I’ll hurry over, and if you 
put up the red, and the yellow with the blue cres- 
cent, I’ll understand that I’m to come on Ab- 
dallah. Red on top will mean to drive over, red 
below to ride. Then if you need an errand done 
in a hurry I’ll be ready.” 

“Darby, that is truly great!” cried Joan rap- 
turously. “What should I do without you to 
brace me up? But, oh, Darby, don’t let me 
have to hang the blue flag ! Or a black one — you 
know what that would mean!” And Joan 
choked. 


1 78 Nut-Brown Joan 

“You certainly won’t have to use either. 
Good-bye, old girl. You’re the greatest girl I 
know — you’re a regular soldier. I declare, girls 
may be afraid of mice and cows and such little 
insects, but when it comes to clear pluck in fac- 
ing hard lines they beat us boys,” said Darby, 
with an admiring and chummy pat on Joan’s 
shoulder as he turned to go. 

“I haven’t much pluck to-day,” said Joan, 
Darby’s praise helping her to drive back the 
big tears his pat called forth. “ Darby, will you 
look often for those signals?” 

“ Every hour ; I promise,” said Darby. “ I 
can be excused from lessons long enough for 
that ; anyway, I can make it up. Good-bye, Joan ; 
keep up heart — I’m sure if you don’t lose that, 
you won’t lose anything else.” 

But in the morning, when, soon after Mr. 
Darrington had gone to town and the children 
had started for school, Doctor Dean made his 
first call, the quick look he exchanged with the 
nurse showed only too plainly that he saw great 
danger of Joan’s losing something which seemed 
to her far more precious than her own heart. 


179 


The Signal Code 

“ How long has he been like this ? ” the doctor 
asked the nurse in that curt, anxious utterance 
that those acquainted with sickness have learned 
to know and dread. 

“ Since nine — nearly an hour, doctor,” replied 
the nurse. “ I have been impatient for you.” 

“Yes, yes; there’s no time to be lost, and I 
took Hammond’s last cylinders of oxygen yes- 
terday for old Mrs. Hartwell — there will be no 
more in town until afternoon. And it takes far 
too long to send to New York. Mrs. Darring- 
ton, can you suggest any way — any speedy way 
— of sending to Yonkers for oxygen?” asked 
the doctor. 

“Oh, no, no! Oxygen? Is Ken — is he in 
danger?” cried Mrs. Darrington. 

“In mortal danger, dear madam; we must use 
oxygen at once. How shall we get it, Miss Chis- 
holm ? ” said the doctor. 

Aunt Deb knit her brows, clasping and un- 
clasping her hands with the nervousness caused 
by their being, for once, useless; she could not 
suggest any way of getting that on which the 
baby’s life might hang. 


180 Nut-Brown Joan 

Just then Joan pressed forward. She had 
thrown on her crimson eiderdown wrapper, and 
looked like a spray of salvia as her tall figure 
swayed forward in her eagerness to make the 
doctor understand what she had to say. 

“Darby — Darley Danforth and I have signal 
flags, Doctor Dean,” she said. “ We have set- 
tled on some that will bring him over here on Ab- 
dallah — his horse, a very fast horse. He will 
look for those signals at ten — that will be in ten 
minutes — and he will come right over if I call 
him. Then he will ride to Yonkers, and he will 
have the oxygen here sooner than any other 
horse in Cornleigh could bring it. Let me run 
and put up the signals — shall I? Say quick.” 

“ Yes, of course,” said Doctor Dean, looking 
into the dilated dark eyes shining out of the 
white face, surprised at the suggestion, but too 
accustomed to acting on emergencies to hesi- 
tate. “ Put on something, Joan. If you go out 
in that wrapper I shall have two patients.” 

“ No time — I can’t get cold — I can’t feel cold,” 
called back Joan, already halfway down the 
stairs. 


The Signal Code 1 8 1 

Out into the sharp air she ran, her hair stream- 
ing, her crimson wrapper fluttering as she fled 
toward her arbour like a belated cardinal bird. 

The halliards for the signal flags were in place. 
Joan’s quivering hands seized them, fastened to 
them, first the yellow flag with the blue crescent, 
than the red flag, and pulled. The ropes caught 
and hitched a little, but then worked smoothly 
— in a moment the little flags fluttered out to 
the breeze, which caught and displayed them in 
the clear winter sunshine. 

Joan’s breath came in sobs. " O God, O 
dear God,” she moaned, “ don’t let Darby forget 
to look, and don’t let him forget what it means 
— not this time, oh, please, not this one time!” 

Slowly she retraced her steps to the house, 
shivering as the wind slapped back her wrapper. 
How long would they have to wait, if Darby saw 
the flags, and oh, if he should not see them! 

It was not long, except to such anxious wait- 
ers, before the swift beat of Abdallah’s hoofs 
echoed on the frozen driveway, and Darby reined 
him in at the door. 

Aunt Deb and Joan were ready for him, and 


1 82 Nut-Brown Joan 

had the door open and were out on the steps 
before Darby had time to cry : “ Whoa ! ” 

“ Darby, dear boy, what should we do without 
you?'' cried Miss Chisholm. “Will you ride for 
your life to Yonkers, and bring oxygen for 
Ken? There isn’t a moment to lose — he is — he 
is in mortal danger, and nothing but oxygen can 
save him — if that can.” 

“How much shall I bring? I’ll make Ab- 
dallah do his best, Aunt Deb,” said Darby. 

“What you can carry — small size, it’s heavy 
— I don’t know ; take my purse,” said Aunt Deb, 
acknowledging by a loving look the sympathy 
Darby’s use of her name was meant to convey. 

Joan drew down Abdallah’s glorious head and 
kissed him between his beautiful eyes. 

“Do your best, Abdallah, do your best, you 
splendid horse,” she whispered. “ Only you can 
save our darling.” And as she raised her face 
the white star in Abdallah’s forehead was wet. 

The horse put forward his shining ears, and 
lifted one slender leg as if guaranteeing his fidel- 
ity to Joan. 

Darby leaned forward in the saddle, gathered 


The Signal Code 183 

the reins in one hand and laid the other on Ab- 
dallah’s head. “ Go, Abdallah, go, my beauty ! ” 
he whispered, and the horse fairly gathered him- 
self together and leaped forward at his young 
master’s command. 

Darby waved his hand backward, a flash of 
light where the sunshine glanced over Abdallah’s 
gleaming flanks, and horse and rider were gone. 

“It won’t be long, auntie; it can’t be long,” 
whispered Joan. “ I am sure Abdallah will save 
Ken.” 

But it was weary waiting. The doctor had 
gone on to visit the old Mrs. Hartwell who had 
exhausted Cornleigh’s supply of life-giving oxy- 
gen — at least in cylinders — promising to return 
shortly. Little Ken lay very quiet, but the nurse 
took the feeble pulse frequently, each time with 
a graver face, and anxious looks at the clock. 

Half past ten struck, then quarter to eleven, 
five minutes to eleven; three-quarters of an hour 
since Darby had gone, and Yonkers a ten miles 
ride! Eleven strokes the little clock tolled out, 
and the nurse wet Kenneth’s lips with the only 
stimulant she dared give, and still they waited. 


184 Nut-Brown Joan 

A stick of charred wood fell in the fireplace, and 
even Miss Chisholm started, while Mrs. Darring- 
ton uttered an hysterical little cry which she 
quickly stifled, and Joan leaped and quivered. 

Five minutes, ten minutes after eleven. Joan 
sat erect — she had ears as sharp as a terrier’s. 

“Hark!” she whispered, and in an instant 
they all caught the sound which she had been 
first to hear — the swift fall of hoofs, rushing 
nearer, and in a moment turning into their gate. 

“Darby! Thank God!” murmured Aunt 
Deb, and followed Joan down the stairs which 
she had descended, she could not have told how. 

“Oh, Darby!” was all Joan could say as she 
dashed out of the door and received a precious 
cylinder, and handed it to Aunt Deb, who turned 
at once and ran back with it to the room where 
the little life was ebbing out. 

Abdallah stood quivering in every limb, his 
breath coming short through his red and dilated 
nostrils, but proud, Joan fancied, of his feat. 

“ I’ll take Abdallah home to be cared for,” 
said Darby, patting the hero’s wet flanks. “ He’s 
done his ten miles in an hour, including the short 


The Signal Code 185 

stop at the druggist’s. Good boy, fine fellow! 
Then I’m coming back to stay with you for the 
afternoon, and be here when they tell you Ken’s 
safe. Run in, J. — don’t try to talk.” 

Joan turned away, quite speechless, and Darby 
and Abdallah trotted down the drive. It was 
not long before Darby was back again. Joan 
met him at the door. “ The doctor’s here again,” 
she said. “ It’s too soon to tell — they hope the 
breathing and the heart are a little better for the 
oxygen. Oh, Darby, if Ken lives, you’ll have 
saved him!” 

“And our signals, and Abdallah — chiefly Ab- 
dallah,” said Darby. 

“Bless every hair on him!” said Joan fer- 
vently. “ Is he harmed ? ” 

“ Not a bit. I won’t use him, except to walk 
him about to-morrow — he’s tired, but no harm 
done. I tell you a good horse is worth while. 
Where shall we go?” said Darby. 

“ Upstairs in the cupola, if you don’t mind. 
I feel as if I must crawl off somewhere — while 
I’m waiting,” said Joan. 

Darby gave her hand a pat that conveyed his 


1 86 Nut-Brown Joan 

understanding of the significance of the tragic 
ward waiting , and together they climbed to the 
cupola, armed with wraps which Joan had gath- 
ered up on the way. 

Neither felt like talking, and Joan made her- 
self a little nest on the floor, and curled up at 
Darby’s feet, comforted by his presence. 

“ Don’t get down there, J. dear,” said Darby, 
but Joan shook her head. 

“ I feel like getting away down, and lying 
quite still, Darby dear,” she said. “ Don’t mind 
me, and let me alone. It’s a comfort to have you 
here, if you can stand it.” 

So Darby said no more, and after a time the 
brown head dropped forward, and to his shocked 
surprise he found that Joan had fallen asleep 
with her head on his boots, like a faithful dog. 
He dared not move nor raise her for fear of dis- 
turbing her, and he was thankful that she could 
forget her sorrow for a time in sleep. 

So Darby sat motionless till his entire body 
ached with cramp, thinking anxiously of what 
might be happening downstairs, yet half hoping, 
as the light faded, that there was better news, 


The Signal Code 187 

since for bad news they would surely have sought 
Joan. 

It was dusk early, for the sun went down in 
clouds, and the light was already getting grey 
when a step came up the cupola stairs. 

Joan was instantly awake, and sprang to her 
feet as Trude entered, Ban-Ban in her arms. 

“Well, J., we have looked everywhere for you, 
all of us,” said Trude. “I thought you were 
here, and I brought you Ban-Ban, for he’s 
lonely.” 

“Ken?” said Joan sharply. 

“Ken is better,” said Trude. “Yes, really 
better,” she added, as Joan seized her arm. 
“You hurt, Joan. The doctor says he is very 
weak and not safe yet, but that he thinks now 
he will live. The oxygen saved him. He says 
he couldn’t have held out much longer.” 

“Darby, Darby, do you hear her? Do you 
hear her, Darby?” cried Joan, sobbing and 
laughing hysterically. “You did it, you and 
Abdallah! Come on down; come quickly. I 
want to get down where there’s more air, and 
people, and everything. Come, Darby.” 


1 88 Nut-Brown Joan 

Darby followed his friend, hoping that she 
was not getting delirious in her relief. At the 
foot of the stairs they encountered Aunt Deb, 
who took Joan in her arms without a word, and 
then turning to Darby held him close, and kissed 
him again and again, regardless of a big boy’s 
probable dislike of such a demonstration. 

But Darby did not object; he kissed Aunt Deb 
back with fervour, and whispered: “That’s all 
right, Aunt Deb. I didn’t do anything, but stick 
to the horse — Abdallah deserves to be hugged 
more than I do.” 

“And only think, auntie, just for one minute 
think! If it hadn’t been for those blessed flags, 
and our code we couldn’t have got word to 
Darby for ever so long — it might have been — 
been too late,” cried Joan. 

“ It would have been too late,” said Aunt Deb. 
“A very little longer would have been too late, 
the doctor thinks. Fancy our owing Ken’s life 
to your game, and to those fluttering bits of rags 
all the other children laughed at ! ” 

“It’s a queer thing how much hangs on so 
little in this world,” said Darby sagely. “I’ve 


The Signal Code 189 

noticed it myself often. I’ll be back in the 
morning, J. Good-night, everybody.” 

“ Good-night, Darby, dear boy,” said Aunt 
Deb. “We shall none of us try to thank you.” 

“ Good-night, Darby,” added Joan. “Some 
day I’m going to do something for you, if I have 
to wait forty-nine years to do it. You don’t 
know how it comforted me to have you to-day, 
aside from your saving Kennie. And to sleep 
on your boots ! ” she added, with a gleam of her 
usual mischievousness. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE PRIDE THAT PRECEDED 

t 

ITTLE KEN came back to the 
world which he had so nearly 
quitted, with the rapidity with 
which children make that dread 
journey. The Darringtons cele- 
brated Christmas with their joy of reprieve from 
a great sorrow added to the happiness of the 
feast, and when the day came on which the poor 
little man might properly have paid his New 
Year’s calls Kenneth and his “ Doctor Dear ” 
parted company, the little patient being beyond 
the need of medical services. 

Winter fairly begins only after the year has 
begun, and the Darrington household settled 
down to the lengthening days with their strength- 
ening cold feeling all cosy and comfortable. 
Joan began her daily tasks with Aunt Deb, happy 
in getting about them; it seemed to everybody 
190 



The Pride that Preceded 191 

that nothing mattered since Kenneth was to 
live. 

Only Sonia walked apart, head up and mys- 
tery in her eyes, — like “the cat that walked by 
himself,” Joan said, — abstracting herself from 
the family content, as she had abstracted herself 
from the family discontent. 

“ There’s something up with Sonia,” said 
Georgie to Joan and Dick and Trude as she 
languidly lent a hand to Joan’s morning task of 
setting the library to rights. “ She’s getting 
more nifty than ever — really she’s unbearable 
now.” 

“ Only that she’s so airy, she’s funny,” said 
Joan breathlessly, for she had just set her duster 
afire in the grate and had frantically extinguished 
the blaze. “ Before she was just airy enough to 
be maddening, but now she’s over-doing it enough 
to be a lovely joke. I can’t keep a straight face 
when she looks at me through those glasses of 
hers as if she were so sorry for me for not being 
her — she — that she was always saying: ‘There, 
little girl, don’t cry ! ’ ” 

“Well, I don’t enjoy that sort of joke,” said 


192 Nut-Brown Joan 

Georgie angrily. “I’d like to know what there 
is to make her feel so superior to us! I’d like 
to know where she’d be if it wasn’t for us ! ” 

“ Oh, don’t let’s think of that, Georgie ! ” cried 
Joan quickly. “ I don’t like to remember Sonia’s 
poor, because that’s something she can’t help, 
and it’s mean to cast favours up at her, even 
behind her back. Besides, there’s enough to 
scold about that she can help! This is a new 
kind of niftiness she’s set up. There’s some 
special reason for her being airy in this new 
way — I wonder what it is ! ” 

“I made a limerick on her yesterday,” said 
Dick suddenly. “I noticed Sonia’s nose was 
higher than ever before you spoke of it.” 

Dick and Guy and Joan were forever making 
limericks on all the events — and lack of them — 
in the family. Joan had a decided talent for 
rhyming, not shared by pretty Georgie, nor artist 
Trude, whose awe of her gifted sister and her 
favourite brother was great in proportion to her 
own lack of this special talent. 

“Tell us, Dick,” she now said proudly, for 
though the limericks the Darrington youngsters 


The Pride that Preceded 193 

made were scarcely equal to Mr. Lear’s, they 
were in higher favour in the family. 

Dick produced a rumpled bit of paper from his 
pocket, smoothed it out on his knee and willingly 
read : 

“There was a young lady named Sonia, 

Who daily grew toney and tonier, 

Till her nose and her lip 
Got such an up-tip 

That she seemed always smelling ammonia.” 

“Fine, Diccon!” cried Joan approvingly. 

“Isn’t that perfectly glorious!” cried Trude, 
in a rapture of awe-struck pride. 

“Might be improved on,” said Guy, who had 
just come in. “How’s this, for instance?” 

“There was a young person named Sonia, 

Who grew ever toney and tonier, 

Till she scorned a small word, 

And, as I have heard, 

Considered six syllables euphonier.” 

“Not one bit better than Dick’s,” said Joan 
decidedly. “ Not as good. There’s no such 
word as euphonier, and you have to run the s 
of syllables on to the next word, and then swal- 
low hard, to get that last line in — it’s too long.” 


194 


Nut-Brown Joan 

“Then it’s up to you to make a better; the 
Unwritten Law, you know,” said Guy. 

It was understood — an unwritten law — among 
the three limerick-making Darringtons, that if 
any of them criticised another’s limerick he 
must make a better one. 

Joan tossed her head. “That ought not to be 
hard,” she declared, scrambling to her feet in 
blissful ignorance of the black mark on one cheek. 
“Let’s see — Sonia, bonier, conier, donier, fonier 
— Bonier will do.” Joan proved that she was 
a true poet, because she always followed the true 
poetic method of searching a rhyme by running 
over the alphabet to find a fitting, and at the 
same time rhyming, word. She stood, frown- 
ing awfully for a few minutes, then announced 
her readiness by crying : “ How’s this ? ” and 
reciting the following effusion: 

“There was a young person called Sonia, 

Who felt it was certainly tonier 
To live upon air. 

For she said: I’m aware 
That it proves one has brains to grow bonier.” 

“That’s the best!” cried Trude decidedly. 


The Pride that Preceded 195 

“ Much the best,” echoed the others, Guy and 
Dick joining the unprejudiced chorus. 

“ Here’s another,” said Joan, her cheeks 
flushed and her eyes flashing with the excitement 
of composition and applause. “ I don’t know 
that it’s as good.” And she recited: 

“There was a young person called Sonia, 

Who felt that it proved she was tonier 
To scorn all our brood, 

For she said: Though ’tis rude, 

Fve heard that great wit made one lonelier.” 

There was a shout at this one, which, having 
personal application, was the best enjoyed. 

“That’s a dandy, J.,” cried Dick enthusias- 
tically. But Joan shook her head, with a true 
critical instinct. 

“ It’s too much in need of knowing the family 
and how Sonia acts, to be good,” she said, not 
too clearly. 

“Well, they’re both the wonderfullest things, 
to be made right off like that, I ever heard,” 
declared Trude. “And to think that Sonia puts 
on airs to such a girl as our Joan!” 

Sonia, however, pursued her lofty way uncon- 


196 Nut-Brown Joan 

scious of her cousins’ comments and of Joan’s 
genius, in which Trude felt such legitimate pride. 
Perhaps, though, it did betray some conscious- 
ness of Joan’s claims to the intellectuality Sonia 
boasted that she snubbed Joan rather more than 
she did any of the other Darringtons. There 
was a peculiar up-liftedness about Sonia of late 
that seemed to indicate special reasons for her 
chronic good opinion of herself, the air of one 
set apart; such an air as might have been worn 
by an ancient Grecian who had received one of 
those embassies from high Olympus which were 
then so delightfully likely to visit mortals. 

It was quiet, sharp-eyed little Henley who 
discovered the amazing fact that Sonia made 
frequent visits to the grounds of the vacant house 
which had been the object of the foundation of 
the Knights of Castle Dangerous. The knights 
had languished; indeed, they could not be said 
ever to have existed, since their history ended 
with their beginning. It had been rather inter- 
esting to meet and take the oath of knighthood, 
but Darby and Joan found it below their years, 
after all, to play at adventures ; Guy and Georgie 


The Pride that Preceded 197 

had never been interested in it, Dick and Trude 
could not keep it up alone, so the order had 
withered in its opening flush, lost sight of in the 
interesting events of real life. But the House 
remained the object of vague terror it had always 
been, and it was surprising to find Sonia, who 
was confessedly a coward, haunting its grounds. 

It was not many days after the morning of the 
limericks that Trude — quick to see and read 
faces aright, if slow otherwise — discovered that 
Sonia’s superior air was modified, and that her 
stately brow wore a shade of anxiety. This 
increased as three days wore on, and Joan even 
thought once or twice that her cousin was fol- 
lowing her with eyes which besought her for 
something which the lips would not ask. As 
they did not ask, the plea had to remain un- 
answered, but Joan wondered if there had been 
something wrong with Sonia when one day she 
did not return to luncheon, and the afternoon 
crept on without her appearance. 

“She has gone home with some of her girl 
friends,” said Mrs. Darrington easily, in reply 
to Aunt Deb’s anxious suggestion that there 


198 Nut-Brown Joan 

might some mishap have befallen the girl. “If 
it were Georgie, or Joan, or Trude I should be 
worried, because they always report their move- 
ments to me, but Sonia disdains such childishness, 
and I am not in the least uneasy.” 

Darby was over for the afternoon; both he 
and Joan were unequal to entertaining themselves 
in their present mood, so they yielded to Dick’s 
and Trude’s pleading to play being Knights of 
the Castle Dangerous and go over to the thrilling 
domain of the Deserted House. To the younger 
pair’s disgust the elder, instead of throwing them- 
selves into the game, got into an animated dis- 
cussion of something they had been reading, and 
strolled along toward the house oblivious to 
Dick’s insistence that they had come to pretend 
it was the Castle Dangerous, and to scale its 
walls, and Trude’s disgusted reminders of her 
presence. 

When they had come close to the west side of 
the house, Darby and Joan ahead, talking eagerly, 
and Dick and Trude morosely following, a sound 
reached Dick’s quick ears which brought him to 
a standstill, grasping Trude’s arm excitedly — a 


The Pride that Preceded 199 

sound more thrilling in its actuality than their 
wildest imaginings. 

It was the sound of sobbing, low, then rising 
to cries of anguish. Darby and Joan heard, too, 
and stopped short, Joan with her most convincing 
argument unfinished on her lips. 

“ For mercy’s sake, what is it?” she whispered 
to Darby. 

Darby shook his head, turning a trifle pale, and 
the four gathered close together, gazing earnestly 
at one another, listening to the melancholy 
sound, which increased rather than abated. It 
was cowardly little Trude, whom the reading of 
her oath of knighthood had so alarmed, who 
made the first movement and the suggestion 
which rather startled the others. 

“ We are Knights of this Castle,” she said, with 
trembling lips, “and all knights are obliged to 
help a lady. So we owe it to the house and the 
crying person to go in — we swore to be secret 
and sure. We’ve got to be sure now.” 

“She’s right, Joan; in we go,” said Darby. 

“I’m ready,” said Joan, with her character- 
istic toss of the head. “We’d better not go in 


200 


Nut-Brown Joan 

through that narrow window, because we ought 
to keep together and not go in one at a time. 
We don’t know what’s happening in there. 
There’s a window ’way round on the other side 
where we can get in — Darby and I found it. 
Come round.” 

She started off and the others followed, Trude 
making desperate effort to keep up, with her 
short legs and long boots, through the snow- 
drifts. 

At the window in question Darby and Joan 
paused. 

“ Push it up softly, and get in as near at once 
as we can,” Darby whispered. The window 
stuck, and, it seemed to the children, creaked 
dreadfully, but, listening, they heard no footsteps 
coming toward them, and they bravely entered. 

The sound of sobbing was lost to the invading 
band on that side of the house, but, going tip- 
toeing down the hall and across to the other side, 
they soon came within hearing of it, and pro- 
ceeded cautiously to approach it. 

“We must burst into the room abreast,” 
whispered Darby, who was in advance, to his 


The Pride that Preceded 201 

followers. The other three nodded; Dick and 
Trude were quite unable, from terror, to do more. 
Onward the four advanced, very softly, and with 
the best kind of courage, which triumphs over 
fear. Before the door from behind which came 
the sound they had traced, heard more plainly 
now in all its mournfulness of sobs, moans and 
inarticulate interjections, the rescuers paused. 

“Now! Together!” whispered Darby, seiz- 
ing Joan’s hand. 

With a bang they threw open the door. At 
the same instant a fearful shriek echoed within, 
something heavy fell to the floor, and the rescu- 
ing party clutched each other in a panic of fright, 
peering into the room which was too dark for 
them to do more than make out a form prostrate 
before them. 

Joan was the first to rally; awful as it was, 
something must be done ; they had not come there 
merely to gaze. She took a step into the room, 
and Darby was instantly at her side. Hand 
in hand the two crept towards the figure on the 
floor, looking around fearfully for someone else 
to appear. Stooping, Darby turned it over, and 


202 


Nut-Brown Joan 

uttered a cry of surprise. It was Sonia ! Sonia 
in a dead faint. 

There was no sign nor sound of anyone else 
about. There was no time to wonder what 
had brought Sonia here, or who had left her 
alone, apparently thinking she was locked in the 
desolate house. The first thing to be done was 
to get her out, and, as she was heavy, and 
entirely unable to help herself, the task was not 
easy. 

“Come help us drag her, Trude and Dick,” 
ordered Joan. “There isn’t a soul here but her; 
there’s nothing to be afraid of, though what on 
earth — never mind, though, come on.” 

Darby took Sonia’s head, Joan her feet; and 
Dick and Trude lent their aid at any and all 
available points. Thus they slowly carried her 
to the window by which they had entered, and 
laid their burden down. 

“If only she would come to!” sighed Joan. 
“ How can we ever lower her out of that window 
without breaking her?” 

“ I know ! ” cried Dick, and, jumping out of 
the window himself, disappearing around the 


The Pride that Preceded 203 

corner. Presently he returned dragging a plank ; 
by this time Sonia had begun to stir and to moan 
plaintively. 

“You help me put this in the window and 
we’ll slide her down,” said Dick. “ I noticed 
this board as we came along. We can steady her 
so she won’t slip off, nor land too quick, and 
maybe scraping along will bring her to.” 

“I shouldn’t wonder,” laughed Darby, but he 
welcomed Dick’s invention. 

It worked perfectly, from the workers’ point 
of view — and Sonia could not declare hers. She 
did revive when she had finished her journey 
in Trude’s lap, that plump young body being 
generously seated in the snow to receive Sonia 
and prevent her from plunging into it. 

“What has happened?” demanded Sonia, sit- 
ting up and feeling her head after the approved 
manner of young ladies recovering from swoons. 

“ We’d like very much to know,” said Darby. 
“We found you alone, crying in that house.” 

“Oh, I remember!” shuddered Sonia. “I 
was shut in there! When you burst that door 
open I thought my hour had come, and I fainted, 


204 Nut-Brown Joan 

because I felt sure I had been trapped there to be 
murdered. Thank goodness it was you ! ” 

“ Thank the Knights of Castle Dangerous that 
you behaved so dreadfully about, Sonia,” said 
Trude sternly. “It was because we had that 
society, and Dick and I coaxed Joan and Darby 
to be knights to-day, that we heard you. I think 
it’s wonderful that the knights saved you after 
all.” 

“ Well, who did you think it would be, Sonia? ” 
demanded Joan. “Who did you expect to mur- 
der you, and what for? and who trapped you?” 

“ I can’t answer any questions now,” said 
Sonia, rising from the lap of the moralist who 
had been taking her opportunity to point out the 
merciful retribution which had come upon her 
cousin. “ I will never tell these children, and 
I don’t care to confide in Darby, but I had made 
up my mind to tell Joan before this happened. 
It’s a most interesting story,” she added, rather 
provokingly, considering that she had just re- 
fused to tell it to three-fourths of her rescuers. 

“Well, I suppose the best thing to do now is 
to get her home,” acquiesced Joan, with a sigh. 


The Pride that Preceded 205 

“If you knew how ill I feel, and what I’d 
suffered, you would indeed think so,” said Sonia 
loftily, as she leaned heavily on Joan and Darby, 
and they began their progress homeward. She 
never could be quite simple and unaffected, but 
there was a humbled look of misery on Sonia's 
face that declared she had really been through 
some ordeal. 


CHAPTER XIV 


A FALL AND A DAY OF RECKONING 

T was a very humiliated and chas- 
tened Sonia whom Joan found 
propped among the pillows when 
she responded to her invitation 
to wait upon her in her own room 
immediately after breakfast on the morning fol- 
lowing her rescue. 

The shock to Sonia's nerves had left her with 
a headache, rather welcome than otherwise, since 
it excused her from facing the family and prob- 
able questions at the first meal of the day. She 
sent a message to Joan by Trude when her tray 
was brought up, asking her cousin to come to 
her. So Joan softly opened the door, and saw 
Sonia bolstered up in body, but with an expres- 
sion on her face that seemed to indicate that 
nothing could bolster her mentally. 

“Joan, come in," she said sadly, yet half 
206 



Fall and a Day of Reckoning 207 

enjoying the importance of having a confidence 
to impart. “ I wish to tell you the mysterious 
and melancholy story of the romantic events of 
the past two weeks.” 

“Gracious! As bad as that?” cried Joan, 
closing the door behind her and taking the low 
rocker near the bed. “How do you feel?” 

“ As well as anyone could who had been 
in such danger after days of excitement and 
anxiety,” returned Sonia. “ Now please be quiet, 
Joan, and let me tell you the story, for my head 
aches so badly I must make it brief. Two weeks 
ago I sent a poem to The Acropolis.” 

Joan gasped as Sonia paused for the effect 
of her words. “ To the biggest magazine in the 
country!” she cried. “Did you really think 
they would take it?” 

“I had good ground for my belief,” said 
Sonia sharply. “ They did take it, at once. And 
that’s not all,” she added, satisfied with Joan’s 
look of amazed respect. “ I had a personal letter 
from the editor telling me that since Mrs. Brown- 
ing’s death he had seen no poem that could be 
compared with mine — no woman’s poem. And 


208 Nut-Brown Joan 

he asked me to write to him and tell him some- 
thing of myself and my work. So I wrote,” 
continued Sonia, nodding in response to Joan’s 
widening eyes and parting lips, “ I wrote and 
told him all I expected to do, and that I was sure 
he was right in thinking that I was destined to 
be Mrs. Browning’s successor, for I had long 
felt sure of it myself. I told him I was not yet 
sixteen years old. In his last letter ” 

“He wrote again?” cried Joan. 

“Wait. Of course he wrote again several 
times,” said Sonia, forgetting her headache in 
her satisfaction at seeing Joan so dumbfounded. 
“ In his last letter he said he was amazed to learn 
that my beautiful poetry — I had sent him some 
more — was produced by a maiden, — he said 
maiden , mind you, — hardly more than a child, 
and he said that he felt sure that it could 
have come but from one as lovely in person as 
she was in mind. So he asked me to meet 
him.” 

“Sonia!” cried Joan, wondering, incredulous 
and decidedly shocked. “It never could have 
been the editor of The Acropolis who did such 


Fall and a Day of Reckoning 209 

an idiotic, such an ungentlemanly thing! Where 
did he want you to meet him?” 

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. He had told me 
not to mail my letters to him, because his mail 
was likely to be opened by the sub-editor, if it 
went to the office when he happened to be out, 
so I put them where he told me to,” said foolish 
Sonia. 

“ Put them ? Do you mean he has been in 
Cornleigh to get these letters?” cried Joan. 
“ Sonia, you are a bigger goose than I thought 
you were! I don’t know what this all means, 
but I do know that nothing on earth could make 
me believe such a thing of such a man as the 
editor of a great magazine must be, unless I saw 
him write those letters myself. Somebody has 
been making game of you. Where did you leave 
your letters? Did you get his at the same 
place?” 

“ His came to me in the mail from New York,” 
said Sonia, with frigid dignity. “ You will never 
guess where I put mine ! He told me he had an 
agent in Cornleigh who would get my letters and 
forward them to him. And I was to leave them 


210 


Nut-Brown Joan 

in a certain tree in the grounds of the Deserted 
House. He said it was far more interesting to 
correspond with a true poet romantically and 
secretly than by the common mail, and that he 
could not let my letters reach him by the same 
way that the common herd — that’s what he said — 
took to communicate with him. He said he got 
plenty of rhymes sent to The Acropolis, but my 
poems were poems indeed.” 

“ Mercy upon us! And you believed that!” 
gasped Joan, more sincerely than flatteringly. 
“Well, this is silly enough, but how about your 
meeting him? Where was that to be? You 
didn’t go, did you?” 

“I was to meet him yesterday,” sighed Sonia. 
“ In the Deserted House, in the room where you 
found me. You know I went.” 

“ Sonia, oh, Sonia ! What did you see ? Who 
came? Of course it wasn’t the editor!” cried 
Joan. 

“ It took a great deal of courage to enter that 
dreadful place alone,” continued Sonia, who was 
not to be hurried. “ But I felt I must deserve 
the confidence this gentleman placed in me. I 


Fall and a Day of Reckoning 21 1 

conquered my fears, and I went. When I had 
entered I saw no one, the door closed behind me, 
and I was alone. ,, Sonia grew melodramatic as 
she proceeded. “ I now feel confident that some 
wretch, learning somehow of the editor's dis- 
covery of me — he said he should always feel that 
to him belonged the glory of discovering me — 
used his name to decoy me there to be murdered. 
I think it is very likely that it was some disap- 
pointed writer who was jealous of my success 
and of my genius. If you had not come when 
you did I should have soon been slain.” 

“ Slain! If only you would have been sane!” 
sighed Joan. “ Sonia, I actually believe you are 
crazy. Someone has played a big practical joke 

on you, and I wouldn’t be afraid to guess 

Who knew you had sent your verses to The 
Acropolis 

“Only Georgie, and she promised never to 
tell,” said Sonia. 

“ Where were you when you told her? Where 
was Guy?” demanded Joan suspiciously. 

“ In the upper hall ; I don’t know anything about 
Guy. Do you suppose Joan, if Guy had 


212 


Nut-Brown Joan 

anything to do with this ” Sonia broke off 

threateningly. 

“ Where are those letters?” said Joan, rising. 

“In my trunk. You will find the key in my 
little bead purse in my upper drawer, and the 
letters are folded between my stockings, my six 
new pairs, a letter in each stocking,” said Sonia, 
sitting up straighter in her interest. 

Joan laughed, and produced key and letters, in 
their order. Opening one she gave a little shout 
of amused triumph. “Guy! I knew it!” she 
cried. 

Sonia turned crimson with wrath and mortifi- 
cation. “Very well,” she declared furiously. 
“ It may amuse you to find your brother such an 
ungentlemanly sneak, to play me such a rude 
trick and then shut me up for the night in that 
horrid house, but I’ll see if his mother and father 
agree with you. Hand me my knit slippers, 
please ! ” 

“Now, Sonia, wait a minute,” said Joan, set- 
ting herself to her difficult task of making peace. 
“Of course it wasn’t the right thing for Guy to 
do, but it was only a bit of boyish mischief — 


Fall and a Day of Reckoning 213 

you know boys adore practical jokes. And 
as to his shutting you up there for the night, 
you know yourself he would never have done 
it — he was coming back after he thought you had 
been well frightened. I don’t mean that was 
nice,” she added hastily, as Sonia was about to 
interrupt, “but it was better than leaving you 
there all night, and anything as cruel as that — 
in the cold too — Guy could never have done. I 
don’t know how you’ll like it, but I’m going to 
speak right out. Guy alone didn’t play that joke 
on you — your own conceit did it, just as much. 
I don’t believe Guy thought you’d swallow the 
first letter, but wrote it for fun, and then when 
you did — and not only that, but each other one — 
he went on, making each a little stronger, and 
he couldn’t resist the chance of seeing how much 
you’d take in. I know Guy, and I can see just 
how the whole thing happened! It was really 
as much your fault as Guy’s. You see your con- 
ceit stuck out like a pump handle, and Guy just 
worked it — that’s all. I shouldn’t think a baby 
would have been taken in by those idiotic letters ! 
Come now, Sonia, be generous, and don’t make 


214 Nut-Brown Joan 

a fuss ! Guy would be punished, but where would 
you be? Papa would lecture Guy and make him 
pay for it somehow, but afterward he and mama 
and Aunt Deb would have many a good laugh 
over your silliness, so you would lose more than 
you’d gain. The best thing to do is to keep quiet. 
I’ll make Guy apologise, — I’m sure he ought, — 
and we’ll keep still about it, and only we three 
will know. The children all think you dread- 
fully conceited now, and if they knew of this — 
Darby and all — instead of blaming Guy they’d 
think it great fun, and you’d never hear the last 
of it till you were in your sere and yellow leaf. 
Better forgive Guy, Sonia; it’s more sensible.” 

“I suppose you think no one could like any 
poetry but yours,” said Sonia vindictively. “ It 
might not strike everyone as impossible that 
The Acropolis would accept my poems. If Guy 
did this, then I haven’t heard from the editor yet ; 
he may accept what I sent.” 

“ No fear,” said Joan calmly. “ I don’t think I 
can write poetry, Sonia. I think if I were trained 
very hard and very long I might do something, 
but I’m not sure. I can’t imagine how anyone 


Fall and a Day of Reckoning 215 

who ever read a real poem can be so pleased with 
her own as you are! But I must go down- 
stairs. Papa wants me — or I want him — this 
morning with some accounts. Shall we agree to 
keep this silly thing to ourselves ?” 

“Yes,” said Sonia reluctantly. “I suppose I 
ought to let Guy off, and be above noticing the 
rudeness of a mere boy. But he must apologise.” 

“ He shall ; I promise you,” said Joan, hiding 
a smile as best she could. “ That’s a good fellow, 
Sonia. Rows are horrid, and you really would 
get the worst of this one. Good-bye.” And Joan 
ran lightly down the stairs, laughing all the way 
till she had to sit down to get her breath before 
she gathered up her accounts to take them to 
her father. 

“ So nice to have you going down on a later 
train, papa,” she said, peering over her father’s 
morning paper. 

“ So nice to have a tall brown daughter at my 
side instead of clerks,” retorted Mr. Darrington. 
“ How went the housekeeping last month, Joan, 
my dear ? ” 

“ Better,” said Joan cheerfully. “ The grocer’s 


2l6 


Nut-Brown Joan 

bill is two dollars smaller. Will you audit these, 
Head-of-the-Firm ? ” 

“I am satisfied to take your word for them; 
Aunt Deb helped you,” said her father, receiving 
the brown books which represented the butcher, 
grocer, and other household props. 

“I am not satisfied to have you; I want you 
to see if my bookkeeping has improved,” retorted 
Joan, laying her own account book before her 
father. “ I am trying hard not to hate figures so 
bitterly that I can’t treat them decently. Is it 
better?” 

“Decidedly, Nut-Brown Maiden. You don’t 
know, Joan daughter, how much I admire and 
appreciate you ; I never saw a girl improve as you 
have done this winter — much more than your 
bookkeeping, even! And you are the comfort 
and warmth of the house.” 

“Papa!” cried Joan, quick tears springing to 
her eyes. “Not all that! Do you really mean 
some of it, though ? ” 

“You impertinent brown lassie! Do you dare 
doubt your stern parent?” said Mr. Darrington, 
pinching her ear. “I mean every syllable, and 


Fall and a Day of Reckoning 217 

more. You are my dear, daughterly daughter, 
Joan, and if I had lost everything I had in the 
world, as you at first thought that I had, you 
would have sustained me and comforted and made 
up to me for it all. It would have been worth 
anything to have found you out, my Joan, and 
to have had you grow into what you are.” 

Joan’s brown head went down on her father’s 
arm, where she quietly shed the happiest tears 
of her short life. 

“ Papa, papa,” she whispered. “ I’d have 
worked on my knees, my fingers to the bone, to 
have got this! Do you mind telling me how 
your troubles are going?” 

“Off, my dear,” laughed her father, stroking 
the bowed head. “ Or at least they will be over 
by spring, just as I told you. The economy here 
has taken away all danger of embarrassment in 
the future; I shall be all right soon. And, Joan, 
do you see how much stronger your mother has 
grown? She comes down to breakfast, and is 
quite another woman ! ” 

“I know,” said Joan. “I suppose nervous 
people are better when they are very much in- 


2 i 8 Nut-Brown Joan 

terested in something. And, papa, I really don’t 
think mama minds my being a homely girl — 
American homely, not English, you know — as 
much as she did. Mama and I know each other 
better than we did, and she likes me more and 
more.” 

“Likes you, you queer child!” cried her 
father. “ But, yes; you are more likeable, Joan! 
Do you think love is too strong a word to be 
used between parents and children?” 

“ Maybe not,” laughed Joan, jumping up to 
throw both arms around her father’s neck for 
a big hug. The father she had worshipped 
afar was her dear, familiar, idolised comrade 
now. 

“ Oh, you brown bear ! ” gasped Mr. Darring- 
ton, catching at his collar. “You’ll never have 
another father, Joan, when you’ve choked this 
one. Be off with your books and your bills and 
your squeezes! Your accounts are models, Joan, 
and your figures quite correct, but your conduct, 
miss, is unpardonable, taking most unwarranted 
liberty with our sacred person! Do you not 
know that I am your over-lord and sovereign ? ” 


Fall and a Day of Reckoning 219 

Joan bent low and backed silently from her 
father’s presence, as from the presence of royalty. 
But at the door she paused to turn upon him a 
saucy face. 

“ Not a sovereign, my liege ; not more than a 
farthing,” she said as she disappeared. A joke 
that betrayed her English descent or her familiar- 
ity with the tables of English money. 

In the hall she encountered Guy, and pounced 
upon him instantly. 

“Guy, how dared you?” she whispered, pull- 
ing him into the library. 

“Oh, cracky! I knew you’d be on to me!” 
sighed her brother. “Will there be a fuss?” 

“Do you suppose Sonia wasn’t mad?” de- 
manded Joan. 

“How’d she find out who did it?” Guy 
questioned in his turn, suspiciously. 

“ I told her,” said Joan promptly, adding as 
she saw Guy’s darkening brow: “If I hadn’t 
papa would have heard the story and would have 
gone at it to have found out who had been 
making a fool of Sonia ” 

“Nature!” interrupted Guy. 


220 


Nut-Brown Joan 

Joan could not help nodding. “And that 
would have been worse,” she finished. 

“As it is Sonia will go to dad, and I’ll have 
to take the consequences,” said Guy gloomily. 

“ Don’t you think you ought to be willing to? ” 
asked Joan. “ Really, Guy, it was a mean trick, 
guying — pardon the pun; I didn’t mean it — a 
guest in your house! Even if she was a perfect 
dunce to swallow your bait,” she added. 

But there was a gleam in Joan’s eye that Guy 
discovered, and rightly construed as partial sym- 
pathy; it would hardly have been human not to 
have enjoyed Sonia’s downfall. 

“Joan, stop preaching! You don’t find it so 
bad a joke, even if you do feel called upon to 
disapprove,” Guy cried. “ And I do believe 
you’ve got her to keep still — your lips are 
twitching ! ” 

“Well, she did say we three might keep this 
affair a secret,” said Joan slowly. 

Guy burst into a beaming smile. “J., you’re 
a trump ! ” he cried. “ How did you do it ? ” 

“I strongly suggested that though you were 
punished, she would be laughed at, and never 


Fall and a Day of Reckoning 221 

hear the last of it, if the story got out, so she 
agreed to be noble. I thought she would; Sonia 
can’t stand ridicule,” said Joan sagely. 

“ Well, you certainly are a trump ! ” cried Guy. 
“I hadn’t any idea she would rise to the hook 
the way she did, and when she swallowed every- 
thing I put on it, no matter how absurd I had 
to keep on — it would have ’most killed me to 
stop! And just you wait till you see the letters 
she wrote me, thinking I was the admiring editor 
of The Acropolis! Well, if they aren’t peaches! 
But I confess, when the game was up, I didn’t 
like the idea of facing dad’s wrath. He’d have 
laughed over Sonia in private, as you say, but 
he’d have given it to me for helping her make 
a fool of herself.” 

“So he ought,” said Joan quickly. “I prom- 
ised Sonia you’d apologise, and you really must, 
Guy.” 

“All right; that’s cheap, and I guess I owe it 
to her,” said Guy easily. “ Help me write a Jim 
dandy of a note!” 

“ You seem quite able to write notes yourself,” 
said Joan. “ And, by the way, you mustn’t show 


222 


Nut-Brown Joan 

me the letters Sonia wrote the supposed editor; 
it wouldn’t be fair. Burn them — though I’d love 
to read them. But you’ve got to burn them, Guy, 
and not show them to a soul. She’s a goose, but 
you are a gentleman, and father’s son, and he 
couldn’t let a girl in for a secret trick and then 
show her silly letters, all about her genius and 
the rest of the nonsense ! ” 

“ I’ll offer them on a penitential pyre,” said 
Guy, bowing with mock deference. “ Behold the 
Honourable Miss Darrington,” he added, giving 
Joan one of her childish nicknames. But he 
liked his sister better for her loyalty, and faith- 
fully kept his word to her. 


CHAPTER XV 
SILLY GEORGIE 


ONIA came in like a lion, but 
she’s going out like a lamb,” said 
Joan. Her cousin had come forth 
from her retirement from the 
world not only as good as new* 
but far better. For a few days Joan waited to be 
snubbed, and expected the Sonia of the past three 
months, with her selfish indifference and general 
superiority to her surroundings, to reappear. 
When she did not reappear, or in but modified 
glimpses, Joan began to realise the amazing fact 
that Sonia was actually ashamed of herself, was 
grateful for the genuine courage which had led 
her cousins to face possible danger for her sake, 
and had tardily, but happily, resolved to show her 
appreciation of their magnanimity toward her by 
making herself a more acceptable member of the 
family. 



223 


224 Nut-Brown Joan 

Joan drew a long breath when she had taken 
in these blessed facts; it was February, the winter 
was wearing away, and it really seemed as though 
the worst of her trials were melting away, too, as 
the sun mounted higher. 

She was a very busy Joan in these late winter 
days, but a far happier one than she had been 
in the autumn, a fact proved by her forgetfulness 
of herself, for, unfortunately, happiness is scarcely 
cognisant of itself, and only when we are miser- 
able do we, poor mortals, brood over our state. 

Trude was ambitiously painting Joan's portrait 
in oils. She knew rather less about mixing her 
colours than one might desire, and her drawing 
was not beyond criticism, but Joan and Darby, 
the only persons honoured by glimpses of the 
masterpiece as it progressed, considered it mar- 
vellous, and indeed it was far from a bad likeness, 
and an astonishing achievement for an amateur 
under eleven. 

Joan was sitting to the artist one afternoon in 
the nursery, and Darby, perched on the foot of 
Henley’s iron bedstead, amused himself at in- 
tervals by stiffening his wrists and elevating his 


225 


Silly Georgie 

body by his arms, with his legs horizontally 
extended as he watched Trude’s progress with 
really flattering absorption. 

Someone tried the door hastily, and, finding 
it locked, knocked impatiently, rattling the handle 
at the same moment. 

“Who is it?” called Trude, whose domain it 
was for the time. 

“It’s me — it’s I, Georgie; is Joan there? Let 
me in,” came back Georgie’s light, but pretty 
voice. 

“Oh, goodness!” sighed Trude, depositing her 
brushes on a copy of The Sun , ready spread to 
receive them, and already partially eclipsed by 
similar use. 

“Never mind, Trudie,” said Joan. “It’s 
getting dark; you couldn’t do much more, any- 
way, and I’m a little tired.” 

“Open the door, then, Darby,” said Trude, in 
a resigned voice, as she covered her picture and 
carried it to the closet, which she locked, dropping 
the key into her pocket. 

Georgie dashed into the room with her face 
full of excitement, a note in her hand, and, as 


226 


Nut-Brown Joan 

usual, shedding the perfume of many springs from 
her violet sachet. 

“Look here, Joan, just look here!” she cried. 
“ There’s going to be a big dance at the Atwoods’, 
in Forty-fifth Street — in town, you know. I’m 
invited, and mama says I may go — to stay two 
days before the dance, and four days after it. 
I’m nearly crazy.” 

“Well, that’s jolly!” cried Joan heartily. 
“Why didn’t they ask me? Or did they?” 

“No, they asked only girls of Dorinda At- 
wood’s age — she’s in her seventeenth year. They 
had to stop there, I suppose, or they’d run into 
Anne’s friends — she’s fifteen — and that would 
make too big a party. Besides, they’re keeping 
Anne Atwood back,” said Georgie, with an air 
of worldly experience. “ I’m mad to go — you 
wouldn’t care much — you don’t care for dancing. 
But this is the cotillion — only fancy, a cotillion 
in such a swell house as the Atwoods’ ! I sup- 
pose the favours will be simply magnificent.” 

“ Oh, mercy, Georgie, how I hate that f simply ’ 
of yours!” cried Joan. “The bare idea of any- 
thing being simple and magnificent! But it will 


227 


Silly Georgie 

be a fine affair; I’m glad you’re going, but I 
guess I’m just as well off at home. I believe 
I’d enjoy skating or a drive behind Abdallah 
better. Wait till my day comes — if it ever 
should — then I’ll dance. I like dancing; you 
know I do, but I hate the fandangles of a dance.” 

“ It’s the same thing,” said Georgie, to whom 
dancing did not mean the poetry of motion, but 
an occasion for splendour, and beautiful gowns. 
“ I’m glad, too, I’m going — of course — but it’s 
half spoiled for me, because of this horrid econ- 
omy of papa’s. Mama says I can’t afford a new 
gown — and if she says so I can’t have it, of 
course, because she’d get it for me if she possibly 
could. So there’s no use teasing, and I think it’s 
dreadful to wear that old pale blue thing!” 

“It isn’t old at all, Georgie Darrington, and 
it’s the sweetest gown I ever saw, and the 
most becoming one you ever had,” cried Joan. 
“You’ve only worn it a few times, and it isn’t 
one bit hurt.” 

“I just hate it,” said Georgie vehemently. “I 
liked the thing when I had it, but it’s not fit for 
a great affair like this. It’s only pineapple stuff 


228 


Nut-Brown Joan 

over taffeta; do you suppose Dorinda Atwood 
won’t have the richest silk to be had ? ” 

“If Dorinda Atwood can afford a fine gown 
and you can’t, I should think that settled it,” said 
Joan sensibly and with the indifference of a young 
person to whom dress was a very minor considera- 
tion. “ I think pineapple over taffeta — especially 
a pale blue pineapple like yours — is the loveliest, 
most poetical sort of gown for a ydung girl — 
much nicer than heavy silk, which any old frump 
could wear! And you are so fluffy you look 
well in floating stuff and pale, faint tints. I 
don’t believe Mrs. Atwood will get Dorinda a 
heavy silk either; they know what is nice, those 
Atwoods, and if they were going in for heavy 
silken clad daughters they wouldn’t have called 
the girls Dorinda and Anne.” Joan rather sur- 
prised herself with the depth of this observation, 
not knowing how true it would sound until it was 
uttered. 

“ I suppose there’s no use fretting,” said 
Georgie, with a pout. 

“I should say there wasn’t!” cried Joan. 
“Why in the world, Georgie, can’t you ever be 


229 


Silly Georgie 

straight happy and satisfied? You’re always 
wanting something else. I should think it was 
enough to be going in to New York to stay six 
days, and have a dance like this in the middle of 
them.” 

“So it is, J.,” said Georgie, clearing up. “I 
hope you’ll be invited to nice things when you’re 
old enough.” 

“ H’m ! ” said Joan as her elder left the room, 
and she and Darby followed downstairs. “ She 
doesn’t seem to think there is great hope of it, 
does she?” 

Darby laughed. “Will you skate to-morrow, 
and drive the next day?” he said. “There are 
two nice invitations right off, without waiting 
to grow up to Georgie’s great age. She’s awfully 
pretty, but it is a pity she hasn’t some of your 
sense.” 

“ And I some of her prettiness? ” laughed Joan 
as she saw her chum out of the door. Somehow 
she never felt sensitive about being “a homely 
girl” when she was with Darby, and, indeed, 
since she had grown so interested in living, 
minded it less every day under any circumstances. 


230 Nut-Brown Joan 

Georgie was not perfectly successful in keeping 
her mind fixed on the joy of going for her visit 
and to the dance in New York, and disregarding 
the new gown for which she hungered. She 
watched Aunt Deb pack her trunk with a gloomy 
brow, but in the morning when she started off 
with her father her face was wreathed in smiles, 
and the pale blue grievance, packed away in the 
trunk which had preceded her, was for the 
time forgotten. Georgie went away on Satur- 
day, — the dance was on Tuesday, — and she was 
not to return until Saturday night, owing to a 
slight change in the first arrangements. 

Joan begged her mother to take this chance, 
when their eldest, who objected to childish things, 
was absent, to invite some little friends of Dick’s 
and Trade’s to a lunch party. The luncheon was 
to be on Thursday; it depended largely upon Joan 
for its success. The children were to spend the 
afternoon and play games, and without Joan 
these games would be dull enough, so Dick and 
Trade declared, both of whom were in a high 
state of delight over the plan. So Joan worked 
away blithely all the morning, making the light 


231 


Silly Georgie 

cake at which she had become expert, beating 
icing, and whipping cream, while willing Am- 
brosia mixed salads, and chopped chicken, broiled 
chops, and clarified buillon until, when the guests 
were summoned to the dining-room at one o’clock, 
Joan surveyed the table with satisfaction, of which 
a good share was rightly hers. 

Aunt Deb presided, Mrs. Darrington finding so 
many high-pitched voices as her young son’s and 
daughter’s guests brought with them trying to 
a head disposed to ache. Joan, halfway down the 
table, supported Trude, and Dick sat enthroned 
at the foot. 

Joan could not see the front walk from her 
seat, but Trude could, and when the lunch- 
eon was half over, and the boys and girls, 
under the influence of the warm viands and good 
things, had thawed to the acquaintance with one 
another which at first they seemed to have dropped 
in the hall, Joan heard an exclamation from the 
plump hostess of the day, and looked up to see 
Trude staring out of the window with an alarmed 
face. 

“ What’s the matter?” cried Joan, and Trude 


232 


Nut-Brown Joan 

replied slowly, as if she could not believe her own 
eyes: “There’s Georgie, coming home.” 

“Georgie!” echoed both Aunt Deb and Joan, 
and Aunt Deb added : “ Something must have 
happened. Go and see, Joan; our guests will 
excuse you. Georgie is not due until to-morrow ; 
she must be ill.” 

Joan pushed back her chair very readily, feeling 
sure her aunt was right. When she got to the 
hall she met Georgie just entering, and her usually 
pink and white face was so white, and her expres- 
sion so tragic, that Joan stopped short, turning 
pale herself, and quite unable to ask a question. 

Georgie burst into tears at the sight of her, and 
seized her arm, stifling the sobs which struggled 
to pass her lips, lest her mother should hear them. 

“ Oh, Joan, you’re the very one I want,” whis- 
pered Georgie, realising suddenly what a reliable 
young person this snubbed younger sister was in 
an emergency. “ I’m in dreadful trouble. Come 
up to the cupola where no one can hear us — I must 
talk to you. Does anyone else know I’m here ? ” 

“Yes. We have a party for Dick and Trude; 
the children are at luncheon now. Aunt Deb is 


2 33 


Silly Georgie 

there — they all know you came. Aunt Deb sent 
me out to see what brought you here ahead of 
time,” said Joan, scarcely able to speak, and 
with frightful visions of vaguely imagined hor- 
rors, which might have befallen Georgie, floating 
through her brain. Why, why did she ask if 
anyone had seen her? Even inexperienced Joan 
could not help perceiving that her sister’s manner 
was that of a person who felt disgraced. 

“ Go back and tell Aunt Deb that I’m all right, 
— not a bit sick, — but that I wanted to come 
home, and thought it would be better not to 
stay at the Atwoods’ another night. Then come 
straight up to the cupola and let me tell you about 
it,” said Georgie, proceeding slowly up the stairs. 

Joan obeyed, begged the children to try to 
get on without her for a while, and ran as fast as 
her feet would carry her after Georgie. 

Joan found Georgie, a collapsed heap of mis- 
ery, on the chilly floor, but she made an effort 
to check her tears, and sat up as though Joan 
and the chance to confess were most welcome. 

“What is it, Georgie? Do tell me this in- 
stant,” said Joan, closing the small door behind 


234 Nut-Brown Joan 

her and seating herself on a Japanese mat be- 
side Georgie. 

“It’s all that dreadful dress,” began Georgie. 

Joan uttered an impatient exclamation. “ You 
don’t mean,” she cried, “that you’re making all 
this fuss, and have come home, and frightened 
me blue, just because you didn’t like your pine- 
apple?” 

“ Wait till I tell you,” said Georgie, with a 
touch of dignity. “You’re such a child! No, 
it isn’t that, but when I got there Dorinda had 
the loveliest new gown you ever saw — soft, yet 
heavy, white silk, and embroidered with the palest 
yellow — I never saw such a dream ! ” 

“Well!” cried Joan, restraining herself from 
further comment, as Georgie paused. 

“Well, it made me miserable, of course — it 
would anyone but you — to feel my gown was so 
horrid ! I couldn’t think of anything else all day 
Sunday, though we had company, and in the 
afternoon drove in Central Park.” 

“And went to church in the morning, I sup- 
pose!” remarked Joan drily and suggestively. 

“Yes,” said Georgie, oblivious to sarcasm. 


235 


Silly Georgie 

“ Monday morning one of the best stores adver- 
tised a sale of evening gowns — some for young 
girls ” 

“Oh, Georgie!” exclaimed Joan, guessing 
something of what was to follow. 

Georgie nodded mournfully, evidently pitying 
herself for having read the advertisement. 

“ I asked Dorinda Atwood to go with me, just 
to look at them ” she began, but Joan inter- 

rupted her. “What did you tell her? You must 
have said something about your gown.” 

“I said I couldn’t get one before I came in,” 
said Georgie, with a blush. “ That was true, but 
I didn’t tell her why I couldn’t get it.” 

“ No, you let her think, though, it was because 
there was no time, or no gowns good enough in 
Cornleigh ! If there is anything I hate it is sneak- 
ing around — afraid to tell the- honest truth, and 
afraid to do the other thing!” cried Joan. 

“ Now don’t scold, Joan ; I’m miserable enough, 
goodness knows ! ” protested Georgie. “ We 
went down to Broadway, and we saw the dresses, 
and there was one that made my mouth water. 
It was all white, and so lovely! It was really 


236 Nut-Brown Joan 

awfully cheap, for it had been a hundred dol- 
lars ” 

“And then it was what?” interrupted Joan 
again. 

“Fifty,” said Georgie softly, knowing how 
that sum would sound to Joan’s ears. Joan 
groaned, and Georgie hastily continued : “ I told 
them I’d take it, and to send it up the next morn- 
ing — it didn’t need a single alteration. What 
I intended to do was to wear it at the dance, and 
then send it back — it was charged — and tell them 
I’d changed my mind about having it.” 

Joan could not keep silence another moment. 

“ Georgie Darrington ! ” she cried. “ Of all dis- 
honourable, dreadfully mean things to do ! Why, 
I’d go in a coffee sack before I’d do it! Get a 
dress home you didn’t mean to keep, wear a hand- 
some gown belonging to someone else — even if 
it was a store, it didn’t matter — it wasn’t yours 
— and then send it back, and not pay a cent! 
Why, it is contemptible! That’s what comes of 
vanity, miss. How did you get it charged; did 
they know papa ? ” she asked, with an after- 
thought. 


237 


Silly Georgie 

“No; they knew Dorinda — the Atwoods have 
an account there, and she said it would be all 
right — that I was her guest/’ said Georgie, hang- 
ing her head still lower, as she too perceived her 
meanness, with Joan’s honest eyes staring at her. 

“ And you let the Atwoods think mama had sent 
you in there, and let you order a new gown, and 
hadn’t given you the money to pay for it, but 
trusted to the Atwood’s name to carry you 
through! Oh, mercy; how you have disgraced 
us!” And Joan scrambled up, and began to 
pace the narrow space, her honourable pride in 
her name up in arms. 

“ I wore the gown, Joan,” Georgie continued 
meekly. “And — now here is the worst of it! 
I spilled ice cream on the front, and I couldn’t 
send it back!” 

“And you owe for it? Fifty dollars?” gasped 
Joan, stopping short. 

Georgie nodded in speechless misery. 

“ What do you intend to do about it ? ” asked 
Joan, looking down with very little pity on the 
transgressor. 

“ I suppose they will send the bill to papa, and 


238 Nut-Brown Joan 

he will pay it, but no one knows what he will do 
to me,” moaned Georgie. 

“Well, whatever it was you ought to be will- 
ing to stand it to make up for this!” said Joan. 
“ But that bill can’t go to him this winter, when 
he’s bothered. It’s got to be paid some other 
way. You have twenty-five dollars that Uncle 
Abner sent you at Christmas.” 

“No, I haven’t; I spent it,” said Georgie. 
“ I’m sure I don’t quite know where it went.” 

“I have mine,” said Joan slowly. “And I 
have the other twenty-five he gave me last year. 
I suppose there’s nothing for it but to give you 
my money. I was saving it for some books — 
and — and other things. But I think you must 
take it for that dress.” 

Georgie sprang to her feet, and threw her arms 
around Joan in the delight of an unforeseen res- 
cue. “Oh, Joan,” she cried, “what a dear, dear 
old darling you are ! How can I ever thank you ! 
You don’t know how I hated to have papa 
know.” 

Joan freed herself from her sister’s embrace, 
too disgusted to enjoy a demonstration of affec- 


239 


Silly Georgie 

tion just then. “ So do I hate to have papa know ; 
if I didn’t I don’t believe I’d pay that bill,” she 
said. “ But I won’t have dear old daddy both- 
ered any more than I can help; he’s had the ex- 
pense of Ken’s sickness in spite of our trying 
to economise. Do you know, though, Georgie, 
I’m afraid it isn’t right to keep this from him? 
If you are going to do things like this he ought 
to know it, and stop you.” 

“Joan, Joan, I never, never will do such a 
thing again ; you needn’t be one bit afraid,” cried 
Georgie, with an earnestness Joan had never seen 
in her before. “ You needn’t think I don’t know 
how wrong it was to get that dress charged, and 
wear it, meaning to return it — I do know. And 
even if I am vain and silly, as you think, I don’t 
do things that are dishonourable. If you will 
pay for the gown I will save all my money to 
pay you back, and you shall have the dress — 
I know it isn’t spoiled — only for sending back. 
I promise you, on my word, I will never do again 
what I did this time — I just couldn’t stay, I was 
so miserable — I shall not forget.” 

Joan felt the sincerity in Georgie’s words, and 


240 


Nut-Brown Joan 

her heart was melted. She put both arms around 
the damp little figure and kissed the swollen and 
tear-stained face. 

“ All right, Georgie ; the money is yours. I 
don’t care for the money, — you know that, — but 
I want to do what is right for your sake. I’ll 
trust your promise. Come down, and I’ll get 
the money for you, and then I must go back to 
Trudie’s and Dick’s party — they want me to play 
with them, and play for them to dance. I’m 
sorry it happened, Georgie, but if it makes you 
more contented it will be worth fifty dollars. 
We’ll keep it to ourselves now — maybe some 
day you’ll be ready to tell — I honestly think you 
ought ; secrets are bad, bad for us all, I am sure.” 
And Joan kissed Georgie again, and went down- 
stairs, sore in heart that her sister had been so 
weak and wrong, regretful of her little hoard, 
and the books thus deferred, but glad withal, 
for she felt that she and Georgie had met, and 
were nearer and more truly sisters than they had 
ever been before since Joan had come into the 
world to be a sister to Georgie. 


CHAPTER XVI 

THE END OF THE MILLENNIUM 


T really seemed for a while as 
though the millennium was es- 
tablished in the Darrington 
household — the reign of peace on 
earth. 

Joan had not fully adapted her mind to the 
new cousin Sonia, when Georgie began to prove 
the truth of the greatest of poets who said: 
“ Some falls are means the happier to arise.” 

Mournfully had Georgie accepted Joan’s six 
shining gold pieces, and with many tears had 
exchanged them for an appropriately blue-tinted 
money order, and forwarded it to the firm to 
which she was indebted for the gown which had 
tempted her beyond her strength. Mournfully 
had she taken that gown from its tissue paper 
wrappings when her trunk had arrived, and dis- 




242 Nut-Brown Joan 

played to Joan its many beauties, in which Georgie 
herself could never take pleasure. Even Joan, 
the callous, admitted that the gown was enough 
to warm anyone to enthusiasm, but she wondered 
all the more, as she admired it, that mere per- 
sonal decoration should have tempted Georgie to 
dishonour. 

And now — the episode of the gown tempora- 
rily closed — Joan was discovering that she had 
a new sister, as well as a new cousin. Georgie 
assumed the charge of certain lighter household 
duties which had been Trude’s and Joan’s care 
all winter. She arranged the dining-room, 
dusted, looked after the children — not with per- 
fect regularity and complete reliability, because, 
if it requires time to change the grub into the 
butterfly, it does not require less time to trans- 
form a butterfly into a useful member of 
society. 

But Georgie was certainly in earnest, and, 
what was best of all, she treated Joan with lov- 
ing consideration, trying to please the younger, 
plain brown sister whom she had never before 
thought worth much attention. Of her own 


The End of the Millennium 243 

initiative she stopped the walks to the evening 
mail which Joan had always disliked, and saw 
far less of those girls who had been her chosen 
friends, — much to her injury, Joan thought. 

Aunt Deb, seeing with her keen eyes all this, 
guessed that Georgie had come home from New 
York in some sort of trouble, out of which Joan 
had helped her, but seeing too that whatever had 
happened was working out for Georgie’s welfare, 
and having entire confidence in her “ Nut-Brown 
Maiden’s ” common sense, she asked no ques- 
tions. As no one else in the house saw what 
was happening, Georgie’s secret remained one, 
waiting that day when Georgie herself should 
reveal it. She had solemnly promised Joan to 
confess by and by, for Joan was not willing to 
help Georgie keep secrets from her father and 
mother for all time. 

Thus it was, with Georgie chastened and 
ashamed, and Sonia humbled and wholesomely 
ashamed also, that the millennium reigned in one 
house in Cornleigh. But Joan, having spent her 
life among children, and knowing how likely 
they are to balance accounts by being wildly bad 


244 Nut-Brown Joan 

after being unusually angelic, shook her head, 
even while revelling in the new order of things, 
and said: “It’s too good to last.” 

Before anything had happened to verify her 
presentiment Mr. Darrington came home one 
night with a grave face, and laid a telegram over 
Aunt Deb’s knitting as she sat before the library 
fire. 

“ Uncle Abner Brodnax is desperately ill, Aunt 
Deb,” he said. “You see there is something 
alarming in those few words.” 

“ We must go, Miles,” said Aunt Deb briefly. 

“ I felt sure you’d say so, but I should have 
gone without you, if you could not go,” said 
Mr. Darrington. “We ought to start to-night. 
Uncle Abner is an old man, and has been so hale 
and strong that a break is the more serious. I 
think probably we have no time to lose. Can 
you be ready after dinner?” 

“I could be ready before,” said Aunt Deb. 
“Only a few small necessities in a bag, and I’m 
off. Georgie, Sonia, will you help Joan keep 
affairs here straight till I return?” 

“Yes, Aunt Deb,” said Georgie. “We shall 


The End of the Millennium 245 

be all right. It must be dreadful to be dying with 
no one to care about it.” 

“I care about it,” said Joan quickly, “if you 
mean Uncle Abner’s sickness. I used to be afraid 
of him, and didn’t see how nice he was under that 
gruffness. I really got fond of him this time, 
and I shall be very sorry if I can’t see him any 
more — he was good to me when he was here, 
and I felt as though we might be real friends 
when I was a little older, and more sensible.” 

Aunt Deb looked from one to the other. “I 
think he was already a very real friend to you, 
Joan; he liked you very much in this visit. He 
told me that he had watched and tested you, and 
felt you were going to prove worthy of your 
name. When I come back I will tell you girls 
how much that meant. Abner Brodnax is as 
noble a man as ever lived, and I’m glad, Joan, 
that you had the perception to see something of 
his qualities under that crusty veneer of eccen- 
tricities with which he chose to over-lay them. 
I can’t tell how long we may be gone. I, at 
least, shall stay until — as long as he needs me.” 
Aunt Deb’s voice broke. “ Ever since I can 


246 Nut-Brown Joan 

remember I have known and loved Abner Brod- 
nax — true, loyal friend that he is — and with all 
that splendid heart of his he loved my sister Joan. 
For her sake he has been to me the best of 

brothers ” Aunt Deb rose hastily and left 

the room. The girls looked at one another won- 
dering. Here was an old romance, living to the 
grave and into the old age of its hero. This 
was why Abner Brodnax had cared for Joan, 
this was why he had watched her so closely, and 
why it had been such high praise from him to 
say that she was going to prove worthy of her 
name. He had loved her grandmother, Joan 
Chisholm, and she, evidently, had loved, not him, 
but their grandfather, Hubert Darrington. And 
now Uncle Abner was going down to his grave, 
an old man, unmarried, and still remembering 
her. For the first time Joan felt that the grand- 
mother, of whom she had heard so much praise 
all her life, was a real person, vital, living, even 
a young maiden with a love story ; and her hum- 
drum name of Joan, which she bore for her sake, 
took on sudden beauty — she was glad that she 
also was Joan Chisholm. 


The End of the Millennium 247 

Miss Chisholm and her nephew went away im- 
mediately after dinner, and a great vacuum 
seemed to have been made right in the middle of 
everything — the house and life itself. Joan was 
haunted by the recollection of that lonely death- 
bed to which they were speeding, and was sur- 
prised to find how sad it made her to think that 
Uncle Abner Brodnax would scowl down on her 
with his sharp “ Hey? ” no more. 

Peace still reigned, however; the millennium 
protracted rather than curtailed by Aunt Deb’s 
absence. The children all felt put upon their 
honour to behave properly now that there was 
no one left to look after them, except one another 
and an invalid mother. Joan found time hang- 
ing heavily on her hands, for she could not go on 
with lessons without Aunt Deb, and her tasks 
were lightened by Georgie and Sonia, who had 
assumed several of them. 

Darby had not been over for two days, al- 
though he had replied, to Joan’s signals of in- 
quiry, that nothing was the matter — he was not 
ill. 

On the third day Joan started in quest of him, 


248 Nut-Brown Joan 

feeling sure there was something wrong with 
him, if it was not illness. 

At the Danforth house she was told by the 
maid that Master Darley was out, and Mrs. Dan- 
forth hearing Joan’s voice ran down the hall to 
call her back, just as she was turning away. 

“ Oh, Joan dear,” she cried, “ stop a moment. 
Come in here. I’m so troubled about Darley — 
Darby,” she added, with a tiny smile. “ He is 
fretting his soul out over something, and he will 
not tell me what it is — and he always tells me 
things — we’re chums,” she added, just as Darby 
had spoken when Joan first knew him. If there 
was a person in all the world whom Joan ad- 
mired, with that fervent worship of a young 
girl for a lovely woman, it was Darby’s hand- 
some, sweet young mother. She looked down 
on Mrs. Danforth now from her greater height, 
and said : “ I haven’t seen Darby for two days — 
three to-day, and I thought there was something 
wrong. But I’m sure it’s nothing bad, Mrs. 
Danforth, even if he won’t tell you, though that 
looks bad, because it isn’t in Darby to do any- 
thing mean.” 


The End of the Millennium 249 

“You dear, big girl!” cried Darby’s little 
mother fervently. “ I know that is true, but I love 
to hear you say it, because mothers are supposed 
to be blind. The real truth is that I not only see 
Darley’s faults, but that I feel the smallest mis- 
take he makes as I would a pin prick. You know 
when you have only one boy — and no girl — you 
want to make him perfect. I don’t think Darley 
has any very serious fault, but I can hardly bear 
to have him shutting me out, and enduring some- 
thing alone — he never has done that. And now 
you say he has kept away from you! Joan dear, 
find him, and coax his confidence — girls know 
how to manage boys when they care to use their 
tactful wits! I’ve been so glad that you were 
Dari — Darby's best friend. It is a perfect god- 
send to a boy to have the friendship and affec- 
tion of a good girl. Help your chum now, Joan 
dear, and I shall be more than ever glad he has 
you.” 

“I’ll hunt him up, Mrs. Danforth, and I’ll 
do my best — I think I can manage him,” said 
Joan, flushed and delighted, even while she felt 
troubled by this appeal. “Don’t worry; most 


250 


Nut-Brown Joan 

likely Darby is keeping someone else’s secret, 
that's why he doesn’t talk to you. I just know 
he’s all right.” 

Mrs. Danforth kissed Joan as she let her out 
of the house. “ It’s not strange Darley is fond 
of you, tall Joan,” she said, “but it is very much 
to his credit.” 

Instinct led Joan around the pond to a secluded 
spot which both she and Darby loved. 

“ If he’s not out on Abdallah — and he isn’t — 
then he is most likely moping here,” she thought. 
“Yes, there he is!” 

Flat on his face in the dry, dead grass lay 
Darby, and so occupied was he with his un- 
pleasant thoughts that he did not hear Joan ap- 
proaching. 

“ Hallo, Mountain ! ” she cried cheerfully. 
“ I’m Mahomet — hope you’re pleased to meet 
me! You see you wouldn’t come to me, so I 
had to come to you.” 

“ Hallo, J.,” said Darby, with rather bad grace. 
“ How did you find me? ” 

“Enthusiastic!” remarked Joan. “You see 
I know your burrows. Would you mind getting 


The End of the Millennium 251 

up off that cold ground? You’ll take your 
‘ death of danger.’ ” 

“ I don’t care,” said Darby, so desperately that 
Joan was startled, but she only laughed and said : 
“ Don’t be silly, Darby. It’s no fun getting sick, 
and you’ve no business to risk worrying your 
beautiful mother — you know you’re not strong 
yet after the typhoid. Get up, and be a man. 
Now, what’s wrong? You’re in a scrape, Darby, 
and you’re keeping it from your sworn chum, 
which is rank disloyalty,” she added, as Darby 
slowly arose. 

“ It’s something I can’t tell,” said Darby. “ I’d 
be glad to tell you, J. — I’d like your advice, 
and maybe your sympathy — but it’s no good ask- 
ing me, because I can’t tell.” 

“ That’s because there’s someone else in it,” 
said Joan astutely. “ But that doesn’t matter. 
It’s not dishonourable to talk to me, because you 
know it’s safe, and you owe me your confidence, 
because we promised always to see each other 
through. Is it anything to do with your tutor?” 
she asked, with a sudden suspicion. Darby had 
told her that he found his tutor trying, and not 


252 


Nut-Brown Joan 

too “ square ” ; that supreme virtue, to lack which 
is to lack all in the eyes of a boy worth calling 
one. 

“How did you know?” said Darby, startled 
into betrayal. 

“ I knew,” said Joan, with a smile of satisfac- 
tion. “Now, what have you done, and what 
does he intend doing about it?” 

“ If it wasn’t that I had to deal with that uncle 
of mine, it would be different,” said Darby. “ If 
only mother had been left my guardian there 
wouldn’t be any trouble, because, though she 
doesn’t indulge me, she understands me, and 
takes my word for a thing. But my uncle has 
everything to say about the tutor I have, and all 
those things, and sometimes I think he doesn’t 
like me — he’s so dead against me, even when I’m 
right.” 

“And it is your uncle that will decide the 
trouble — whatever it is — this time?” asked Joan. 

Darby nodded. “ He has decided. If I don’t 
apologise for what I didn’t do by Saturday I 
— I must take the consequences.” 

“And you won’t apologise?” hinted Joan. 


The End of the Millennium 253 

Darby turned on her almost fiercely. “ Would 
you?” he demanded. “If you were dead right, 
and that — that tutor of mine knew it, and had 
deliberately made a false report to my uncle?” 

“ No, of course I wouldn’t. But why don’t 
you explain to your uncle, tell him exactly what 
did happen?” said Joan. 

“I did tell him, and he chooses to doubt my 
word — says I don’t speak the truth. No one 
ever said that of me before.” And Darby’s eyes 
gave out a dangerous light. 

“ Have you told your mother about it?” asked 
Joan artfully. 

“No. Why should I bother her with what 
she can’t help? She could tell my uncle she be- 
lieved me, but all he’d do is laugh at her for a 
doting mama,” said Darby. “ She hasn’t a bit 
of control in the matter.” 

“What will happen if you don’t apologise, 
Darby?” asked Joan, beginning to feel the case 
was more difficult to deal with than she had 
expected. 

“My uncle will come to Cornleigh expressly 
to thrash me,” said Darby. 


254 


Nut-Brown Joan 

Joan caught her breath, and the two looked at 
each other in silence, answering flashes of wrath 
leaping from both pairs of eyes. To the girl 
no less than to the boy the ignominy of such a 
threat was dreadful. Joan realised in an instant 
all that it meant, and that if a blow fell Darby 
would never be the same boy again. 

“Now tell me precisely what it is all about, 
Darby,” she said, in an intensely quiet voice. 

Darby looked at her, hesitating, yet won by 
the sympathy which she did not express. “ I 
suppose I might as well, since we have got so 
far,” he said. “You're a good fellow, J., but 
you do know how to get around a chap. Well, 
you know this tutor of mine is young — just out 
of college — and he’s the son of some friend of 
my uncle’s, and that’s why he sticks up for him 
so. Whatever Mr. Shoreham says, goes. One 
day, not a week ago, he got Abdallah out of the 
stable — not a-by-your-leave, mind you, nor a 
word to anyone, I was out — and he rode him, 
goodness knows where ! But he beat that 
horse ” 

“Oh!” gasped Joan. 


The End of the Millennium 255 

Darby nodded fiercely. “Beat my Abdallah, 
who never needs a stroke, nor gets one, and 
brought him in dead tired with welts on his 
flanks. On my way home I met some boys, and 
they told me how they’d seen Shoreham hammer- 
ing Abdallah, and the horse plunging, and I came 
home raving crazy. I don’t know what I told 
that man — it was out in the yard, and out of 
hours, and I didn’t consider him my tutor, but 
someone who had helped himself to my property, 
and then abused it. So I told him I wouldn’t 
have it — and lots of things, I suppose. Joan, 
that creature said he hadn’t had Abdallah out 
at all! Mind you, there wasn’t anyone who’d 
seen him take him, but the boys had seen him 
riding, and there was the horse, sweating and 
beaten. That was just one drop too much. I 
said I wouldn’t have him for my tutor any longer, 
that he wasn’t fit to teach any boy — which is 
solemn truth — and that I would thank him to 
pack and be off. Of course instead of packing 
he went in town to my uncle, and told a story 
that had as much truth in it as his saying he 
hadn’t ridden Abdallah. I got a stiff letter from 


256 Nut-Brown Joan 

my guardian demanding an apology, or he’d take 
great pleasure in coming up to thrash me. I 
wrote my side of the story to my guardian, but 
he prefers to believe this Shoreham to his 
brother’s son. I won’t apologise, for I was in 
the right, and there you are!” 

“It is dreadful,” said Joan. “What can be 
the matter with your uncle?” 

Darby coloured. “The love of money is the 
root of all evil, Joan. Sometimes I think he 
dislikes me because if my father had not married 
late, as he did, his money would have been his 
brother’s. But maybe I’m wrong — it’s horrid 
to suspect people. Whatever the reason, my 
uncle-guardian has shown dislike to me from 
my cradle. He has a chance to pay old debts 
now. But if he strikes me, Joan, how can I 
stand it? I won’t.” 

“ No,” said Joan. “ He must never strike you ; 
someone must stop him. It’s a pity you didn’t 
know any of the boys who saw this man riding 
Abdallah to death and beating him.” 

Darby stared. “I never said I didn’t know 
them,” he said. “You don’t suppose I’d bring 


The End of the Millennium 257 

outsiders to testify to my own uncle that I spoke 
the truth? If he likes to consider his nephew a 
liar I won’t bring anyone he doesn’t know to 
support my word.” 

“ How proud you are, Darby,” sighed Joan, 
half regretting, half admiring the resolution that 
scorned to bring witnesses to an integrity that 
should have been known long ago without any 
testimony. “ Still, it isn’t very sensible to suffer 
when a word might set you right. Did you know 
the boys then ? ” 

“ Know them ! Why, Guy was one of them,” 
said Darby. 

Joan uttered a rapturous cry. “Guy! Guy! 
Our Guy! For goodness’ sake, Darby, why 
didn’t you say so before? Go home and don’t 
fret — I’m going to straighten this out. Guy! 
Only think what luck ! Good-bye.” And taking 
to her heels Joan sped toward home, never turn- 
ing, much less pausing, as Darby called after her : 
“Joan, Joan, stop! Come back! What are you 
going to do ? Don’t you med-dle ! ” 


CHAPTER XVII 


JOAN ACKNOWLEDGES HER I. O. U. 

S fast as her feet would carry her 
— and that is saying a good deal 
— Joan sped homeward. Guy was 
out when she got there, and for 
more than an hour Joan fumed, 
impatiently waiting him. When at last his pecu- 
liar slam of the front door jarred the house Joan 
darted out of the parlour where she had been 
trying to let the charms of music soothe, if not 
her savage breast, at least her greatly perturbed 
one, and hurled herself bodily on her brother 
with such unexpectedness and force that he stag- 
gered up against the wall. 

“ Great Vesuvius, Joan! what’s the matter?” 
gasped Guy. 

“ Oh, Guy, I thought you’d never come ! ” cried 
Joan. “ How could you be so long when there 
isn’t one minute to lose ? Did you see that dread- 
258 




Jean Acknowledges her I. O. U. 259 

ful tutor of Darby's riding Abdallah and beating 
him? ” 

“What? Again?" asked Guy. “Oh, the 
other day?" he added, as Joan shook her head. 
“Yes, of course, we all saw him — we told Darb 
about it." 

“I know, I know, but I wanted you to say 
so," cried Joan. “ Only think, Guy, when he 
spoke of it and said he wouldn’t have it, he denied 
it right up and down, and then there was a row 
and he reported it to his uncle — his guardian, 
you know — and unless he apologises he will come 
here expressly to whip him — only fancy! A 
great boy like that!" 

Guy leaned helplessly against the hat rack, 
letting his coat hang on one shoulder, the other 
arm being already withdrawn. “A great boy 
like which, J. ?" he asked. “You’d better put 
an egg, or whatever you clear coffee with, into 
that sentence, and clear it up, for of all the mud- 
dles I ever heard it’s the worst! Who told who 
what, and which is going to get flogged?" 

“ Darby told his horrible tutor — he never liked 
him, lie’s only a son of his uncle’s friend, and 


260 Nut-Brown Joan 

that’s why he stands by him — that he had ridden 
Abdallah, and that hardened young man denied 
it! Then Darby was dreadfully mad, and told 
him he didn’t want him to tutor him any more — 
no one would, you know! And that Shoreham 
reported it to Darby’s uncle — not truthfully, you 
understand — and the uncle says Darb must apolo- 
gise, and he won’t, because he was in the right, 
and this Shoreham had been telling 1 — false- 
hoods. And now the uncle says he will come 
to Cornleigh purposely to whip Darby if he 
doesn’t — doesn’t apologise. Darby won’t let 
any of you boys who saw his tutor riding Ab- 
dallah tell his uncle the truth, because he’s so 
dreadfully proud he says if his uncle likes to 
believe his own nephew — his brother’s son — a 
liar, he won’t set him right, and besides he doesn’t 
want to stoop to bring witnesses to his truthful- 
ness, because anyone who knows him knows 
Darby isn’t anything but perfectly truthful — or 
they ought to know it ! I can’t help being proud 
of him for that high-and-mighty feeling he has 
about it, but I know something has to be done 
in spite of him, because if his uncle keeps his 


Jean Acknowledges her I. O. U. 261 

word — and he will! — Darby will be — well, no- 
body can tell what it will do to him! You know 
he’s too big to treat that way, in the first place, 
and then think of the awful injustice!” Joan 
had restrained herself and had told her story this 
time comparatively clearly, and with an impas- 
sioned earnestness that was infectuous. 

The effect on Guy, who liked Darby heartily, 
was all that she could wish. He was pacing the 
hall furiously long before her tale had ended, and 
when she stopped speaking burst out, his face 
flaming red with anger : “ Why, it’s the most out- 
rageous shame I ever heard of! What a sneak, 

what a — a Good gracious ! What kind of an 

insect do you suppose that young fellow calls 
himself? Why, we chaps saw him as plain as 
I see you this minute! He was not only riding 
Darb’s horse, but he was lathering him, and I 
yelled at him : ‘ Hi ! Don’t do that ; that horse 
isn’t used to abuse!’ Well, he’s got cheek to 
deny riding him! What shall we do about it, 
J. ? You’re quite right that it won’t do to keep 
still, no matter what Darb says.” 

“We won’t ask him,” said Joan, delighted. 


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jean Acknowledges her I. O. U. 263 

“Trust me,” said Joan confidently. “I’m all 
right if I have time to think; I believe I know 
just how to do it. Hurry up and ask mama if 
we may go.” 

“There isn't such a great rush, J.,” laughed 
Guy. “We can’t go till after breakfast, and it 
wants an hour yet to dinner time.” 

“Well, there’s a rush about knowing that we 
may do it,” retorted Joan, already halfway up- 
stairs. 

There was no difficulty in winning Mrs. Dar- 
rington’s consent to a proposition which she 
heartily approved, and immediately after break- 
fast Guy and Joan, looking their best, and with 
something of the feeling that Perseus must have 
had when he started out after the dragon, took 
a train for the city. 

All the way in they matured their plans for 
producing the best effect, and it did not seem 
long before they were threading their way along 
Forty-second Street, and boarding a Madison 
Avenue car which should take them nearly down 
to Mr. Danforth’s office, the address of which 
Joan had slyly procured from Mrs. Danforth 


264 Nut-Brown Joan 

without arousing her suspicions of her purpose 
in asking it. 

Joan was decidedly nervous in dodging through 
the scurrying crowd around the general post of- 
fice, and getting into Broadway, nor did she feel 
calmer when she crossed the threshold of the 
towering building bearing the number Mrs. Dan- 
forth had given her, and entered one of the many 
elevators darting up and down. It did not seem 
to strike the elevator man as startling that they 
asked to get off on the seventh floor, though it 
sounded to Joan like little less than announcing 
a plot. “Now, Joan, brace up; everything de- 
pends on keeping cool and well bred, and being 
convincing,” whispered Guy, with a reassuring 
pinch of his sister's arm. 

“All right, Guy; I’ll behave. I always have 
my funk out beforehand, and don’t lose my head 
in an emergency that I know is coming,” replied 
Joan. “Do we open, or knock?” 

Guy replied by opening at once, and the Dar- 
ringtons found themselves unmistakably in Mr. 
Danforth’s office. At the desk sat a man, stem 
looking, with an iron-grey moustache and iron- 


Jean Acknowledges her I. O. U. 265 

grey hair, opening his mail and occasionally mak- 
ing a note on the margin of a letter before he 
tossed it aside. 

He was rather formidable and forbidding in 
appearance, but in spite of that — or perhaps be- 
cause of it — Joan’s courage rose to meet the 
occasion. 

“ Good-morning, sir,” said Guy, stepping for- 
ward with the frank air and handsome face that 
easily won him friends. “ I am Guy Darring- 
ton, and this is my sister, Joan Darrington. We 
are the children of Mr. Miles Darrington, whom 
you may know.” 

“Not personally; I know of him,” said Mr. 
Danforth. “What can I do for you?” 

“ We live in Cornleigh,” said Guy. “ We know 
your nephew, Darley Danforth, very well ; we felt 
that you would be much obliged to us if we told 
you something we know about him — or my 
sister thought so; I am really not the one to 
thank.” 

Mr. Danforth’s face changed; he was not cer- 
tain what this might mean, but assuming that 
their communication must be unfavourable to 


266 Nut-Brown Joan 

Darby he said : “ What else has that young rascal 
been doing ?” 

“ He has been doing a great many things that 
were not rascally since we knew him,” said Joan, 
with just enough warmth in her voice and fire 
in her dark eyes to be impressive, but holding 
her quick temper well in hand. “We are very 
great friends — we children call him Darby be- 
cause I’m Joan, and we are so intimate. When 
I first met him he was saving a little kitten from 
being tortured by a rough fellow, bigger than 
he was. He saved the kitten and gave the rough 
the whipping he deserved. And he is always 
doing things like that. He has a glorious horse, 
which he loves and which loves him, and Ab- 
dallah — that's the horse — obeys his voice like a 
child. Not long ago Darb — Darley saved my 
baby brother’s life — he and the horse — by rid- 
ing ten miles in an hour for oxygen when Ken- 
neth was dying, and nothing else could save him. 
Of course we feel as though nothing could ever 
repay him which we could do for him, but we 
shall always do what we can. Darley is the most 
honourable, upright, truthful boy I ever knew 


Jean Acknowledges her I. O. U. 267 

— and the proudest — unless it is my brother Guy 
here — but he is a Darrington, and Darringtons 
never lie. You see, Mr. Danforth, the reason 
we wanted to come here is this : Darley has been 
staying away from us for a few days, and I went 
to hunt him up. I saw at once he was in trouble, 
and after trying, I got him to tell me what it 
was about — you know girls can do things like 
that. And then he told me that it was because 
he had had a row with his tutor for riding his 
horse without leave, and for beating the blessed 
beast unmercifully, and that Mr. Shoreham had 
denied riding him, though Darb — Darley had 
been told by several boys — my brother here 
among them — that they had seen his tutor riding 
and beating Abdallah. And when he said the 
tutor had lied to you about this, and you believed 
the young man, and not Darley, I wanted him 
to let the boys tell you what they had seen. But 
Darley straightened up, in that splendid, proud 
way of his, and said : No ! If his uncle preferred 
to take the word of a stranger rather than his 
own brother’s son’s word, he would not bring 
witnesses to his truth, which no one ever doubted 


268 Nut-Brown Joan 

before. So then I was ’most crazy, because I 
knew it would be awful if you touched Darby, 
awful for him, and worse for you, when you 
found out the truth. I came home and asked 
Guy if he had ever seen Mr. Shoreham ride Ab- 
dallah, without telling him why I asked. And 
when he had told me what he had seen, we made it 
up between us to come in town to you this morn- 
ing, without letting Darley know — or we never 
could have come! — and tell you how deceitful 
this Mr. Shoreham was, and how treacherous 
he was to you and Darley both. And we hurried 
very much, because to-morrow is Saturday, and 
this was the last chance we had to do this for you. 
Guy, you may tell Mr. Danforth what you saw 
now, please.” 

Guy had stared in amazement at hot-headed 
Joan as she made this long speech, without a 
moment’s pause or hesitation to allow inter- 
ruption. 

There was that in the girl’s intense manner 
which left no room for doubt of her sincerity, 
nor of her knowing precisely of what she spoke, 
and above all things Guy admired the tact which 


Jean Acknowledges her I. O. U. 269 

implied Mr. Danf orth’s yearning to do justice, 
and his obligation to the young people who had 
given him the opportunity. 

Mr. Danforth turned to the boy, his face a 
study in variety of expression. “Well, sir, and 
what have you to add to this extraordinary per- 
formance?” he said. 

Tersely, but forcibly, Guy repeated the story 
he had told Joan of seeing Mr. Shoreham riding 
Abdallah, the beloved, and beating the excited 
creature as he rode, and that he had not merely 
seen the tutor doing this, but had called to him 
to desist. Shortly after his tutor had passed 
Darley had come along, and the boys had told 
him of the abuse of his horse, when, doubtless, 
he had gone home to protest against the wrong. 

“Who are the other boys who saw this?” 
asked Mr. Danforth, with no further comment. 

Reddening under the implied mistrust of his 
word, Guy repeated his comrades’ names. 

Mr. Danforth made a note of them. “Very 
well,” he said. “ I shall go to Cornleigh to- 
morrow, as I intended doing. If I find your 
version of this tale is the true one I shall act 


270 


Nut-Brown Joan 

in the only way possible in regard to the affair. 
In the meantime I appreciate your undoubted 
good intentions, and have the honour of wish- 
ing you a very good-morning, only adding that 
you are a most unexpected and improbable pair 
of visitors.” 

He arose to bow Joan and Guy out, with that 
ironical courtesy which is particularly madden- 
ing to young folk. 

“ No wonder Darb despises him ! ” said Guy, 
in the elevator. “What a cad he is!” 

The next day there was no Darby, and Joan 
spent it anxiously wondering what was the out- 
come of their errand of the day before, and of 
Mr. Danforth’s visit to Cornleigh. Several 
times she found herself shrinking with horror, 
imagining she heard the lash of the unjust and 
disgraceful whip falling on her friend’s flesh. 
But on the whole she regarded the situation hope- 
fully, having much confidence in the power of 
truth to triumph. 

Sunday afternoon Joan heard Abdallah’s hoofs, 
which she knew from the footfalls of all the other 
horses in Cornleigh. She ran down to meet 


Jean Acknowledges her I. O. U. 271 

Darby, afraid, yet eager to look at him. One 
glance showed her that all was right, and as the 
boy threw himself over the horse’s side Darby 
greeted Joan with a laugh, half annoyed, half 
glad, wholly admiring. 

“ What a sneak you are, J. ! ” he cried. “ To 
think of your doing such a thing — you and Guy ! ” 

“ What happened? ” asked Joan eagerly, as she 
shook Darby’s hands — he held out both. 

“ Well, the nunky came,” began Darby, as he 
and Joan walked around the house together, lead- 
ing Abdallah to the stable. “When I saw him 
I thought the ball was about to begin — I hadn’t 
apologised. But he never said a word to me — 
went straight out for a walk ! Presently he came 
back, and instead of me he talked to Shoreham. 
I thought it mighty queer, but I couldn’t see how 
an interview between them was going to help 
me much — still I waited. Then my nunky- 
guardian was closeted for some time with the 
mater — and then I began to see a crack of light 
in the darkness. Finally he called me in and 
told me he had discovered that he had been mis- 
taken. That he was grieved to learn that Mr. 


272 Nut-Brown Joan 

Shoreham was untruthful, and quite unfit to be 
tutor to a young boy whose character was un- 
formed. I wanted to tell him I felt fairly well 
formed on the question of lying, but I held my 
tongue. So he added that he had dismissed Mr. 
Shoreham, who was at that moment putting his 
belongings together for immediate departure. 
You don’t know — yes, you do, I forgot! — well, 
then, you do know what a regular old Doctor 
Johnson my respected guardian is in the matter 
of long words. But the best of all is that the 
old boy begged my pardon, ‘as one gentleman 
should another ’ — them’s his identical words, 
Sairy Gamp! — begged my pardon as one gentle- 
man should another’s for having questioned my 
veracity, which he was rejoiced to find worthy 
of a gentleman and a Danforth! Whew! Im- 
agine my feelings ! Well, I granted this pardon, 
graciously, yet with proper dignity — it was a 
fearfully dignified occasion all round, and then 
my mother hugged me! However, that’s not in 
the story. Then I asked him what had set him 
on the scent — given him the tip, or words to 
that effect — that his nephew was not a sneak and 


Jean Acknowledges her I. O. U. 273 

a liar. And then he told me about your base 
betrayal of my trust! Joan, what am I to say 
to you?” 

Joan executed a war dance in the middle of 
the stable doorway. “ I had to betray your trust 
if I wanted to straighten matters out,” she cried. 
“You don’t mind very, very much do you, 
Darby?” 

“ Mind ! Well, I’d have gone to the stake be- 
fore I’d have given my consent, but I don’t object 
to owning up that I’m mighty glad it’s settled, 
and that you never asked me,” said Darby. “I 
honestly think it was the pluckiest thing and the 
best thing I ever heard of anyone doing. I want 
to find Guy and shake hands with him. But you 
were the one who made him do it, and yours be 
the glory! Seriously, Joan, I am no end grateful 
to you, and so is the mother. You are a true 
friend, and I couldn’t get a better chum if I had 
the building of one. I’ll never forget that you 
stood by me, and saved me from something that 
would have hurt me worse than the pain of it.” 

“ I knew that, Darby,” said Joan, tears of hap- 
piness in her eyes. “ I know it would be the very 


274 Nut-Brown Joan 

worst thing that could happen to you — no one 
can stand injustice. But don’t talk nonsense 
about being grateful ; what do we owe you ? And 
as to standing by you, aren’t we going to stand 
by each other to the very end ? ” 


CHAPTER XVIII 

THE KING COMES TO HIS OWN AGAIN 


NCLE ABNER BRODNAX was 
dead. Mr. Darrington had re- 
turned, leaving Aunt Deb with 
her old friend, and now was go- 
ing back to see him laid away 
forever, and to bring Aunt Deb again to the 
household that was feeling more and more lost 
without her. 

To the children Uncle Abner’s death was 
rather a solemn event than a sad one; Georgie 
and Guy regarded it merely as the ending of a 
life which had already continued far beyond the 
allotted span, an ending so natural that it was 
not a matter of regret. 

But to Joan, sitting with her brothers and sis- 
ters around her by the library fire, while their 
mother sat reading under the lamp at the other 
side of the room on the night that they were 
275 



276 Nut-Brown Joan 

awaiting Mr. Darrington’s and Miss Chisholm’s 
return, the recollection of Uncle Abner brought 
real regret. Aunt Deb’s few words when she 
told them of his love for her grandmother had 
presented him to Joan under a new light, and 
this, added to her consciousness of the under- 
standing which had sprung up between the old 
gentleman and herself, made her thin face grave 
and sweet as she bent her eyes on the fire and 
thought of the pathos of old age, and the strange- 
ness of knowing that he who had been in that 
room but four short months ago had passed for- 
ever out of the body he had tenanted for eighty 
years. 

Aunt Deb entered very quietly. After the 
entire family had sprung to greet her and Mr. 
Darrington, Mrs. Darrington went with her hus- 
band to the dining-room, but Aunt Deb, refusing 
even her well-beloved tea, seated herself in the 
big chair beside Joan, with Georgie, Sonia, and 
Guy opposite, and Dick and Trude close to Joan, 
and slowly unwound her long fur boa, letting it 
slip to the floor abstractedly, in a manner most 
unlike brisk Aunt Deb. 


King Comes to his Own Again 277 

“ Well, my dears,” she said at last, “ it has been 
a sad time to me, but I suppose it ought not to 
be. It is much to have had such a friend as 
Abner Brodnax, and the peaceful ending of a 
good life should never be sad. But the best of 
us are selfish creatures, and we grow more and 
more lonely as years slip by. Still ‘ the just shall 
be held in everlasting remembrance/ and this 
was a just man. It is not a little thing, Guy, to 
leave behind one a stainless record.” 

“I wish you could tell us something about 
Uncle Abner, auntie, if it doesn’t hurt you,” 
said Joan. 

“I like to speak of him, Joan,” replied Miss 
Chisholm. “It is part of what I once said to 
you — that you should be proud of bearing your 
grandmother’s name. Mr. Brodnax had not 
much of a story, — in events, at least, — but it is 
all warp and woof with my dear sister’s history, 
and you ought to know them both. Fifty years 
ago in England Joan Chisholm, my sister, your 
grandmother, was a beautiful girl of twenty, 
and I was five years old. The Chisholm money 
— and there was a great deal of it — was in the 


278 Nut-Brown Joan 

hands of our grandfather Chisholm, who was 
resolutely determined that Joan should marry 
Abner Brodnax, a man of excellent family and 
considerable wealth, who was ten years Joan’s 
senior, and who loved her devotedly. Not far 
away lived the Darringtons, an old family with 
very little money. They had a son, three years 
older than Joan, as handsome as possible, and 
very charming and fine, whom the family were 
resolved to marry to his cousin, she having quite 
enough money to mend his fortunes, besides 
being desirable in other ways. The result of 
these plans was what such result usually is: 
Hubert Darrington could see nothing desirable 
in anyone save Joan Chisholm, and my dear 
sister loved Hubert with the entire devotion of 
an unusually intense nature. So they were 
married, and had both families about their ears 
for doing so, though the only objection on 
either side was a question of prudence — gain, 
perhaps, is the better word. 

“ Miles and his two little sisters were born, and 
Joan was very happy; neither she nor Hubert 
ever seemed to feel that they had lost anything, 


King Comes to his Own Again 279 

and probably it would all have come right in the 
end — for both families were delighted with the 
boy, Miles, your father — if Hubert had not died. 
Then, after a time, grandfather Chisholm began 
to insist that Joan should marry Abner Brodnax. 
Joan refused, though we all loved him like a 
brother. Joan said that if she married him it 
would be but for sordid reasons, and to please 
her family, and that, as she loved her dead 
Hubert as well as she had when he was still 
with her, she would not be any other man’s 
wife. 

“ Grandfather Chisholm was very angry then, 
and threatened to cut her off if she persisted. 
My high-spirited Joan said that she would not 
be forced into doing what she thought wrong, 
and that, since her social position forbade her 
earning her living at home, she would take her 
three babies to America and do it there. No 
one believed she would carry out her threat, but 
she did, and, all alone, succeeded. She had a 
library, and circulated the books, and , maintained 
herself in sundry ways to which she was es- 
pecially suited; in that day living cost less than 


280 Nut-Brown Joan 

now, and New York was not the heterogeneous 
monster it has since become. I wanted to go 
with Joan, for I worshipped her, but I was too 
young. Abner Brodnax followed her, however. 
Not to torment her with importunity to marry 
him, you understand, but to watch over her as 
a man can do, while leaving her free. He never 
asked her again to marry him. When the two 
little girls died he was her comforter and re- 
liance; she used to write me that but for his 
brotherly tenderness she thought that she should 
have died, too. And when he returned to Eng- 
land, as he did regularly, he took to grandfather 
Chisholm reports of Joan’s courage, and told 
him how dearer than ever to him she was for 
her steadfast loyalty to an ideal, and that neither 
loneliness nor poverty made her his wife. It 
is certainly owing to him that at last grand- 
father Chisholm altered his will again, and left 
Joan what should have been hers. Thank 
heaven, it came in time to give her comfort for 
ten years, and to enable her to educate her son 
fittingly! Joan had become attached to her 
adopted land; she never would return to Eng- 


King Comes to his Own Again 281 

land. I was to have joined her here, but when 
your father was seventeen she died. My dear, 
brave, beautiful, true-hearted Joan!” Aunt 
Deb paused, and the young people sat silent. 
“Mr. Brodnax watched over Miles as he would 
have over his own son, and took care that he 
began life under the best auspices,” Aunt Deb 
resumed. “ I have said that Uncle Abner was 
a rich man in the beginning. Every invest- 
ment he made was so wise that his fortune 
increased wonderfully; a young man could have 
had no better business adviser, as he could have 
had no better friend, than Mr. Brodnax was to 
your father.” 

“But we are Americans,” remarked Trude 
suddenly, with her customary irrelevancy, as 
once more Aunt Deb paused. 

“ Certainly you are, by every right and title,” 
said Aunt Deb, with a faint smile. “Your 
father never knew England except as a shadowy 
remembrance; you are all little Yankees by 
birth, and your mother is of pure American de- 
scent, from Colonial days. Oh, no ; Guy here has 
no obligation to serve the king, nor Diccon to 


282 Nut-Brown Joan 

enter the Guards, big and brawling though he 
may be.” And Aunt Deb smiled down on pale, 
studious, quiet Dick. 

“ Uncle Abner left a great fortune,” said 
Aunt Deb, after another pause, in which each 
one had been turning over the story he had just 
heard. She looked at Joan as she spoke, but 
the girl did not raise her eyes from the fire, 
where she seemed to see the young, dauntless 
girl-grandmother, whose homely name she was 
now glad to bear. 

“ To whom did he leave it? ” cried Guy, sitting 
erect as he caught a hidden significance in his 
great-aunt’s tone. 

“How do you think it would have been like 
him to have left it?” asked Aunt Deb. 

“To found some sort of thing to help young 
girls,” said Joan. “ Perhaps a library, as you 
say Joan Chisholm kept one when she came here 
to earn her living.” 

But Sonia had not read romances for nothing. 
“To Joan, for her name!” she cried sharply. 

“Yes, to Joan — or to us!” added Georgie. 
“Did he, Aunt Deb. Did he leave it to us?” 


King Comes to his Own Again 283 

Aunt Deb frowned slightly, but her face 
cleared as she looked at Joan, who had raised 
her eyes at last, and was regarding Miss Chis- 
holm with a frightened look of protest. 

“ He left certain bequests to people in England, 
provided for several poor dependants here — it is 
amazing to discover the good which Abner 
Brodnax had been doing, and which only his 
death brought to light — and he left to each of 
you a thousand dollars to be given to you when 
you are twenty-one — with its interest — to use 
as you then see fit, in memory of him. But the 
bulk of his property he has left to one person, 
encumbered only with an annuity to me during 
my life.” 

“ And that person ? ” prompted Georgie, with 
feverish interest, as Aunt Deb paused. 

“ Is, the will says, ‘Joan Chisholm Darring- 
ton, the second of that name, for the great love 
I bore her grandmother, Joan Chisholm Dar- 
rington.’ And the will has been opened since 
Uncle Abner went home from here last autumn, 
and in a codicil are added these words: ‘And I 
leave her inheritance to Joan Chisholm Darring- 


284 Nut-Brown Joan 

ton for the added reason of the respect I have 
learned to give her, and the affection which she 
has won from me, as well as for my firm belief 
that she will grow into a woman worthy of the 
blood and the name which are hers.’ ” 

Joan had begun to tremble from head to foot, 
and grew so pale that Trude was alarmed. 

“ Aunt Deb, oh, Aunt Deb, I can’t, can’t take 
it!” cried Joan. “ Is it much? Shall I be 
rich? What shall I do with it?” 

“ There is no choice about taking it, Nut- 
Brown Maiden,” said Aunt Deb tenderly, well- 
pleased with Joan’s way of receiving her for- 
tune. “ It is left to you by will, and the law 
would prevent your refusal of it — now, at least. 
Yes, I think it is ‘much.’ I don’t know pre- 
cisely how much, because it is to be all that is 
left after paying these bequests and the costs of 
settlement, but it can’t be under seventy-five 
thousand dollars. And as to what you will do 
with it,” she added, as Joan gasped, and Georgie 
gave a cry of wonder and delight, “there is no 
choice about that either, at present. It is very 
well invested, and must remain where it is until 


King Comes to his Own Again 285 

you are twenty-five, for Uncle Abner did not 
think a young woman of twenty-one knew quite 
as much as a girl of fourteen, or rather, that she 
was often less sensible. You may use a little 
of the interest each year after you are sixteen, 
and there is an annuity to be paid me out of 
the interest, if I wish to have it, but the rest 
lies waiting your control at twenty-five. Don’t 
look so alarmed, Joan, dearie; it is not a mis- 
fortune, but a fortune that has come to you, 
and I am delighted, for I feel sure that by the 
time it is yours you will use it well.” 

“ So you have told Joan that she is an heiress, 
and she feels aggrieved, I gather,” said Mr. 
Darrington, entering, followed by his wife. 
“Mama and I are very glad about it, daughter. 
It is good to know that you are safe forever, 
as far as we can see, from the many disagreeable 
things poverty entails, and I think it is beauti- 
fully touching that, with the money, you fell 
heir to the lifelong love dear old Uncle Abner 
bore my mother.” 

“I love that part of it, papa,” said Joan 
tremulously as she rose to get and return her 


286 Nut-Brown Joan 

father’s kiss. “ It rather frightens me — it 
strikes me as dreadfully solemn. I hope I am 

going ” Joan came to a full stop and ran 

out of the room. 

“You seem to be going, Joan,” Guy called 
after her, rather to enliven the occasion than in 
ridicule, for he understood and sympathised 
with his sister. 

“What a queer girl Joan is!” said Georgie, 
preparing to follow her. “Come, Sonia, and 
let’s cheer her up. Fancy crying over a for- 
tune ! ” 

“Let your sister alone, Georgie,” said her 
father quietly. “I think she feels precisely as 
she should; it is a solemn thing to hold even so 
much of power as nearly a hundred thousand 
dollars gives. You forget that she is moved 
by Uncle Abner’s death and his associating her 
with his lifelong romance and silent devotion. 
Sit down again; I have further news for you. 
The temporary trouble that I was in last fall 
is entirely over. The money which has been 
tied up, and the lack of which crippled me for 
the time, is released, and I am decidedly better 


King Comes to his Own Again 287 

off than I was last July. Our horses come 
home on Saturday; John, who is very ready to 
return to me, is coming too, and you are quite 
at liberty to resume our old manner of living, 
get a waitress and a laundress, a sempstress or 
nursery maid, or both, do no more household 
tasks, and be as happy as you know how.” 

“ Oh, papa ! ” cried Georgie, starting to her 
feet again in a rapture. “ Isn’t that too 
scrumptious for anything! Oh, I am glad!” 

“Well, daddy, that’s great!” said Guy heart- 
ily, while Trude remarked quietly: “I’m not 
sure I could help dusting now.” 

“You might try,” laughed her father. “And 
I want to say that I am very grateful to you all 
for helping through this hard time; I wish Joan 
were here to hear that, because the credit is most 
of all hers.” 

“That’s true,” said Georgie honestly. “I 
don’t deserve any thanks, or not more than a 
syllable for the last two weeks. Joan has been 
perfectly splendid. I wonder if that’s why she 
had this great luck! It’s rather like the story 
of the girl who willingly helped that old woman, 


288 


Nut-Brown Joan 

and then had a shower of precious stones fall 
on her, as a reward of virtue, when she was 
going home.” 

“ She has been a dear child, and no one could 
appreciate her more than I do,” said Mr. Dar- 
rington. “I shall have plenty of time to thank 
her yet, and I shall never forget how unselfishly 
she came to me to sacrifice her time, her pleasure, 
and all her inclinations when she thought I 
needed her and she might help me.” 

“ Yes,” chimed in Mrs. Darrington, in her 
delicate voice. “Joan is really a girl to be 
proud of — clever, sensible, reliable, and with 
such sterling qualities! And do you know, I 
often think of late she is growing better looking ? 
Perhaps when she is older she will be almost 
pretty — queer little brown, thin Joan, whom I 
could never dress to please me!” 

“Joan is going to be very splendid, mama,” 
said Trude, speaking with the instinctive author- 
ity of her special talent. “ I always said she was 
fine, and you’ll see it some day, every one of 
you.” 

“Do hear the Royal Academician,” smiled 


King Comes to his Own Again 289 

Aunt Deb. “However, Trudie is right. Not 
that it matters; my Nut-Brown Maiden is worth 
a dozen other girls any moment, and her looks 
will never be very important, thank goodness !” 

“I think I ought to tell everybody what I 
have been dreading to tell papa and mama,” 
said Georgie slowly, her colour mounting high. 
“Since we're talking of Joan it comes in well, 
and I've been sorry I never knew her until 
lately.” And with faltering voice Georgie con- 
fessed her wrong-doing in the matter of the 
dancing gown, and Joan's goodness to her. 
There was a shocked silence for a moment. Mr. 
Darrington was startled that Georgie could have 
acted so dishonourably, while her mother was 
divided between sorrow for the wrong and pity 
for the wrong-doer. 

“Come here, darling,” she said, the first to 
break the silence. “We must forgive you, since 
you are so sorry, and I am sure such a thing can 
never happen again.” 

But Mr. Darrington intercepted Georgie on 
her way to her mother’s outstretched arms. “I 
am exceedingly grieved to hear of this, my 


290 Nut-Brown Joan 

daughter,” he said, “but I recognise your desire 
to make amends, by your not sparing yourself 
here to-night. It shall be forgiven and for- 
gotten. But one thing I ask: I think justice 
demands that you should yourself repay your 
generous sister, not that I should do it for you. 
Are you willing to earn the money to give back 
to Joan, if I make it possible for you to do so 
by paying you for tasks which you shall perform 
for me? I won’t make them too hard ones, 
Georgie,” he added, with a kindly smile and 
pressure of the little hand he held. 

“I should like it,” said Georgie simply, look- 
ing up through her raining tears. 

“Bravo, my girl; that’s right!” cried Mr. 
Darrington, while Aunt Deb smiled, well pleased, 
yet wondering at this revelation of a new 
Georgie. Mrs. Darrington gathered the old and 
the new Georgie into her loving arms, and 
daughter and mother cried together. 

In the morning Joan sought out Darby to 
impart to him the great, the startling piece of 
news, to which she had grown a very little ac- 
customed over night, and also that the period 


King Comes to his Own Again 291 

of partial eclipse of the Darringtons’ domestic 
comfort was at an end. 

“We shall keep good old Ambrosia,” Joan 
declared. “She has been so kind and faithful 
that we should have to keep her, if it was 
only to sing camp-meeting songs.” And Joan 
laughed at the fancy. 

“That wouldn’t be a bad position to fill; it’s 
one hard to define, though,” said Darby. 

“ Oh, I don’t know ; she would be a minstrel ; 
all families in the Middle Ages had minstrels, 
or at least all kings. And now our king has 
come into his own again — King Miles, you know, 
our royal father — why not have Brosie as 
minstrel?” said Joan. 

“Why not, indeed?” retorted Darby. “And 
so you’re an heiress, J., and are going to be 
deliriously ricn some day, are you?” 

“Isn’t it awful?” sighed Joan, her face 
lengthening. “ I don’t know how rich it will 
be; I thought it was a tremendous sum, but 
papa says it won’t be very formidable if I only 
use the interest, and don’t sell out, and try to 
spend it all in one day. It is hard to tell when 


292 Nut-Brown Joan 

papa is making game of a body. But at any rate 
I know one thing: Fm scared at the prospect.” 

“ Oh, well ; you’ll get over your scare in ten 
years, by the time you’re twenty-five,” said 
Darby. “ I wouldn’t take it so hard — I hope 
it won’t spoil you! Not that I’m scared as you 
are. I don’t believe money makes much differ- 
ence, unless a person’s an idiot already.” 

“Then how could it spoil her?” asked Joan. 
“ Seriously, Darby, it is rather awful. You see 
now I’ve got to amount to something — a girl 
with responsibility and wealth must.” 

“I should think a girl without any money 
had to amount to something,” said Darby, re- 
fusing to respond to Joan’s seriousness. “ You 
ought to be glad, J., if anything turned up to 
force you to stop being a nobody.” 

“An oughty girl?” suggested Joan, dropping 
from her soulfulness into an unblushing pun. 
“I’ll beat you to that tree there, and if I win 
you will kneel, and humbly take back your state- 
ment that I am now nobody! Done?” 

“ Done,” assented Darby. Throwing down 
her hat with a wholly boyish motion, Joan started 


King Comes to his Own Again 293 

at the word “ Go,” when Darby had counted 
three, and beat him by nearly a yard to the 
maple which they had not time to notice was 
beginning to redden with the flowing sap. Darby 
dropped on one knee, sweeping the ground with 
his doffed cap, and almost touching it with his 
deeply bowed head. 

“Lady Fair,” he said, “suppliantly I beg thee 
to forgive me, since I cannot recall the words in 
which I soothly spake. Verily art thou indeed 
no body, but a being all wit and wings, with 
whom to compete were maddest folly. Nobody 
thou art not, in the mortal sense, but a fairy, 
and no body hast thou. Forgive thy conquered 
slave.” 

“Thou art pardoned; rise poor jester,” said 
Joan. And added, as Darby rose, and they 
turned homeward cheerfully munching the fudge 
Joan produced from her ample coat pockets: 
“ Oh, Darby, no money will pay for being twenty- 
five, and no longer able to be just as silly as you 
please ! ” 


CHAPTER XIX 


PROVES A SWAN 

S it to be a lawn party Geor- 

gie?” asked Joan, “or a ” 

“Or a for-lorn party,” inter- 
rupted Guy. 

“ I thought I’d rather have it 
partly one and partly the other,” said Georgie, 
ignoring her brother’s would-be witticism, except 
by a withering look. “ Have it partly in and 
partly out, you know.” 

“Yes, the guests to be in and daddy to be 
out — the expenses,” remarked Guy, not in the 
least withered. 

“ Games and supper out- and dancing indoors 
afterward? That would be all right,” said Joan. 

“ Mama and Aunt Deb think it is too early to 
have supper out-of-doors. They said we might 
throw everything open — doors, long windows 
and all — and have a pavilion for fortune-telling, 
294 



Proves a Swan 295 

and perhaps something else pretty and pictur- 
esque on the lawn, and then have supper in 
the house and dancing in the evening,” said 
Georgie. “ It might as well be mixed up in every 
way. You see it isn’t as though it was to be 
a party for my friends only, but as yours are 
to be invited, and the few friends of mama and 
papa’s who are coming late to see the cotillion 
will be here, why, we might as well entertain 
them in different ways.” Georgie’s voice and 
face expressed misgivings as to the result of the 
experiment. 

“It will be a very nice sort of party,” said 
Joan emphatically, catching this note. 

The long winter — “the winter of their dis- 
content,” Guy called it — was past, and May was 
in the full whiteness and sweetness of the blos- 
soming fruit trees. 

Georgie was to attain the glory of being 
seventeen on the fourteenth; Joan’s fifteenth 
birthday would be on the third of June. Mrs. 
Darrington was to give a large dance on her 
eldest daughter’s birthday, to which the friends 
of the younger were also to be invited, and the 


296 Nut-Brown Joan 

two family festivals were to be commemorated 
together. 

Life had got back on its old basis in the house. 
Every day Mrs. Darrington drove out with John 
on the box as before, and the handsome horses, 
no worse for the visit, prancing proudly. Brosie 
was supplemented in the kitchen by a young 
woman who did not let the good old soul feel 
unpleasantly how much she helped her, and a 
competent waitress relieved T rude’s responsible 
mind of the burden of salts and straight table- 
cloths. Georgie rejoiced audibly in the restora- 
tion to the old order of things, — she loved luxury 
like a Persian cat, — and Sonia was in considerable 
danger of reverting to her natural hauteur as 
she tasted an elegance which she had never pos- 
sessed, and found herself shining, moon-like, in 
the reflected light of her relatives’ prosperity. 

But Joan felt misgivings, and was half in- 
clined to sigh, not for the difficult days among 
those on which they had been practising economy, 
but for those when simpler manners prevailed, 
and they had each had her daily duty to perform. 

“ I have a plebeian mind, Auntie Deb ; there’s 


Proves a Swan 297 

no use talking — I’m not formed for splendour,” 
she said one day as she helped her aunt sort the 
piles of fragrant linen just up from the laundry 
and the young grass. 

“ I don’t care one bit for a big house and lots 
of servants — I truly think it’s all a nuisance. 
The only homes I covet are the little white 
houses — only I shouldn’t like one exactly like 
twelve others — over on the other side of Corn- 
leigh. They do look so cosy, and, I don’t know 
why, but so refined. When Darby and I went 
past the other day they had their bright little 
windows open, and some of them had flowers, 
and birds, or cats on the window sill, and their 
white short curtains were fluttering in the breeze 
— they were sweet, really!” 

“Yes, I know; that is homeliness — in my 
sense, Joan. I told you you could be a fine 
homely girl,” said Aunt Deb, with entire sym- 
pathy. “I don’t call that having a plebeian 
mind; it strikes me that only a very true lady 
sees the beauty of perfect simplicity, and does 
not care for the dollar standard. It is always 
just a bit vulgar to love display, although perfect 


298 Nut-Brown Joan 

service and elegance in living should not mean 
display. You have a young girl’s love for the 
true, dear, and you probably feel as though there 
were more heart in those tiny homes than in 
more splendid ones. That does not follow, how- 
ever ; it is very good that there is no classification 
of the best things — they are diffused.” 

“Well, I know that is the only kind of house 
I feel as though I’d care to have,” said Joan. 
“ I’d like to sit in just such a white-curtained 
window, and write stories, and see with a sort 
of mental telescope the world go by, while I kept 
just out of its reach.” 

Aunt Deb gave Joan a keen look. “I have 
an idea you will never change your mind, my 
dear,” she said. “You need not bother your 
head about keeping out of the world’s reach. 
There are people set down in it who from the 
start to the finish of their lives are never part 
of it. I fancy you are to be that sort, Joan 
Chisholm, dear.” 

“Perhaps when I come into dear old Uncle 
Abner’s fortune, auntie, I can have a little house 
like that. Do you suppose I can? They can’t 


Proves a Swan 


299 


cost more than twenty-five dollars a month/' 
said Joan, with a whimsical glance. “ It does 
seem a pity that a girl with such humdrum tastes 
should have all that money. If he had only left 
it to Georgie!” 

“The person with humdrum — I should call 
them simple — tastes is the one whom wealth 
cannot harm, Nut-Brown Maiden," said Aunt 
Deb. “ By the way, what is your gown for the 
party to be?" 

“ Georgie wanted me to wear that white 
gown which tempted her at the Atwoods. By 
the way, wasn't she fine to tell that story to 
you all ? Georgie is coming out ! " said Joan, 
with much satisfaction. “ She insisted it must 
be mine, as a sort of penance, though it was 
lovely on her, and she did want it. But when 
I tried it on — just to pacify her — she gave in; 
it was too short for me, in the first place, and 
made me look like that funny grown-up girl in 
Life whose mother dressed her in short frocks 
because she was so young herself she was 
ashamed of such a big daughter. So Georgie 
is to have that gown, and I’m getting a new one. 


300 Nut-Brown Joan 

It is so pretty I like it better than I ever liked 
a dress in my life — I really feel quite set up 
over it! It’s green — queer, lovely green — with 
darker green linings that show when the trim- 
mings move, and deep yellowish lace — it’s quite 
a picture gown, auntie! And papa says I shall 
have my birthday gift in advance, and it is to 
be a chain of old Russian pale gold, set with 
dull stones.” 

“He shall give you what he likes for your 
birthday gift, my dear,” said Aunt Deb, “but 
on the fourteenth you are to wear something I 
have for you. Come with me.” 

Joan followed her aunt, wondering. Miss 
Chisholm took from her drawer an old leather 
case, opened it, and disclosed a collar of pale 
green stones, held by a chain of curiously 
wrought and very fine links of dull metal, so 
palely and purely yellow that it was difficult to 
be certain at first glance whether it was tar- 
nished silver or old-fashioned gold. 

“ They were your grandmother’s, and our 
grandmother’s before her, and came to her 
through her father’s family,” said Aunt Deb ? as 


Proves a Swan 


301 


Joan uttered a cry of rapture. “My dear sister 
left them to me, and now they are yours, of 
course, Joan Chisholm.” 

“How perfectly, exquisitely beautiful!” cried 
Joan, tenderly lifting the delicate jewels which 
had delighted the eyes of so many women of her 
race before her. “I can’t begin to thank you, 
dearest auntie. You are so good to me. What 
are the stones?” 

“Pale emeralds, evidently long and carefully 
sought for their colour and uniformity of size. 
The chain is very valuable, from a jeweller’s 
point of view, but of course to us it has a far 
higher value,” said Aunt Deb. “That is what 
you must wear to this dance.” 

“Oh, auntie, it will be a perfect dream with 
that gown!” cried Joan. “It will look as if 
the frock had been built around the old jew- 
els! I really believe I am getting to care for 
dress ! ” 

“ A little more pleasure in it won’t harm you,” 
said Aunt Deb, smiling into the enkindled face, 
well pleased. “Besides, you can set this down 
to the artistic in you, if you like.” 


302 Nut-Brown Joan 

The great day dawned as perfect as a day in 
May can be, borrowing the soft warmth in ad- 
vance from June, yet retaining its own freshness 
and vague hints of greater joys to come. The 
girls watched the sky all day, fearing showers 
and not daring to trust the promise of spring. 
But their fears were groundless. Straight from 
its rising to its setting the sun fulfilled his 
engagements to them, and only the softest, most 
nebulous of little white clouds floated across a 
sky as blue above the Hudson as the one brooding 
over Lucerne. 

Darby came over earlier than anyone else 
could possibly arrive, according to his solemn 
promise to Joan. He found her putting a green 
bow on Ban-Ban, which made him look, with his 
perfectly and delicately formed muscles and the 
silvery sheen on his mauve coat, “ like those old- 
master carvings in malachite and silver at the 
Art Museum/' Trude said, though the rest 
shouted at the comparison. Georgie floated 
down, a pretty vision in her snowy white, with 
its touches of golden embroidery and flowing 
chiffon, crowned by her hair of pure gold. Her 


Proves a Swan 


303 

doll-like face was wreathed in smiles; she was 
seventeen, she was the hostess of the day, she 
looked her best and knew it, and for once there 
was no cloud on her horizon. 

But when Joan arose, having given the final 
twitch to Ban-Ban’s ribbon, and a pat to his 
funny, square little abbreviated Maltese nose, 
Darby exclaimed aloud at the transformation in 
his friend. Her gown suited her perfectly, and 
justified all she had told Aunt Deb of its beauty. 
It was like a Titian gown, yet perfectly simple, 
and its folds fell about Joan’s tall figure so full 
and soft that her thinness was concealed and her 
dignity brought out. Around the throat, where 
the beautiful gown opened slightly, lay the quaint 
emeralds in their pale settings, and above it 
shone a face alight with joy. Joan’s dark eyes 
were warm with content, bright with excitement ; 
her luxuriant dark hair, brushed back smoothly 
from her low, broad forehead, fell into glossy 
braids, caught up with ferns and one creamy 
rose behind her ear. Something in her glance, 
half shy, half pleased, as though she feared, yet 
almost dared to believe the mirror which had told 


304 Nut-Brown Joan 

her she was not, after all, a very homely girl, 
seemed to appeal to Darby for his judgment on 
her. Darby met the appeal at once. 

“ Gracious, Joan ! ” he cried, starting back in 
pretended fear, and with sincere amazement. 
“How perfectly splendid you are! You have 
no idea how nice you look ! ” 

“Isn’t it a pretty gown?” Joan said quite 
timidly, more shy in feeling she looked well than 
in her many hours of mortification over her 
looks. “ I wish we could have had Abdallah here 
to-day. I’d like to put a ribbon on him, and 
let him play around with Ban-Ban.” 

“Mother’s coming; won’t that do?” laughed 
Darby. “ Say, J., may I dance the cotillion with 
you, and just as many other things as you’ll give 
me? If I dare dance with such a splendid 
creature ! ” 

“ Don’t be a goose, Darby,” said Joan, rallying. 
“ I’ll dance the cotillion with you, and anything 
else you like; I don’t know many boys well, and 
they’ll all dance with Georgie and the rest of 
the girls. Here comes the carriage back. We 
sent John down to the station for Dorinda and 


Proves a Swan 305 

Anne Atwood and the other New York girls. 
It looks rather more like a funeral than a party, 
doesn't it? You see John couldn’t bring them 
all, so we told him to get carriages from the 
livery stable, and let them follow him up.” 

Joan flew after Georgie to welcome her guests, 
and Darby saw her for a while no more. It 
was a very large party. Darby was amazed to 
see the number of guests arriving. Since he 
had known the Darrington family they had lived 
so quietly that he had not realised that they 
had been among the gayest in their suburban 
neighbourhood. People drove over to Com- 
leigh from the surrounding towns, and many 
came out from New York, and soon the lawn 
was gay with the girls’ bright colours, speckled 
liberally with the black of the unlucky boys in 
the stiff garments in which custom relentlessly 
clothes them on state occasions. 

It was a very magnificent party also; the 
stringed orchestra from New York played in a 
way that might have made Juno proud to have 
had them at one of her receptions, and Brosie, 
with mingled annoyance and pride, had abdicated 


306 Nut-Brown Joan 

her regions in favour of a city caterer, with his 
corp of accomplished and serious waiters. 

Darby began to feel rather lonely in the 
midst of so many people whom he did not know, 
and with the pleasant unceremoniousness of his 
visits to Joan supplanted by such splendour, 
when Guy came to bear him off to a game of 
old fashioned hide and seek, and he was consoled 
until supper. 

After supper the few grown folks invited to 
see the cotillion began arriving, and then the 
dancing commenced. Darby went to claim Joan, 
and found, to his dismay, that she had been 
engaged for so many dances that there were not 
left for him anything save those which Joan 
had, as she said, “kept by main force.” 

“I am sure I don’t see how it happened, 
Darby,” she said, with a rueful face, not dis- 
guising her strong preference for him as a part- 
ner. “We were so stupid, both of us, not to 
settle just what I was to give you; but you see 
I’d no idea any of the boys would ask me, and 
I don’t see why they did — except I’m Georgie’s 
sister, and they have to be polite to their 


Proves a Swan 


307 


hostesses. Of course you’re to have the cotillion 
— wasn’t it a mercy you happened to speak of 
it? Now, there’s the first waltz! That blue- 
black-haired boy over there is coming after me — 
people will think we’re an eclipse.” 

Joan bowed gravely to her partner, who came 
to claim her after this speech, and whirled away 
feeling as though she had been transplanted to 
another planet where homely girls were at a 
premium. 

Between the dances Joan moved about among 
her guests, anxiously seeing that all the girls 
were sufficiently partnered, dragging Guy, and 
Darby too, from attractive lassies to do their 
duty to those less fortunate, or less acquainted, 
and seeing that everyone had just as much as lay 
in her power to give them of the very good time 
which, to her surprise, she was herself having. 

Bits of comments reached her as she went, 
words of praise for — of course — pretty Georgie. 

“Yes, she is really handsome,” said one lady. 
“All Darrington.” 

“Which she isn’t,” thought Joan. “She is 
mama right over again.” 


308 Nut-Brown Joan 

“ One of the most distinguished-looking young 
girls I ever saw/’ said another. “ How proud 
Fanny Darrington must be of such a young 
Diana.” 

“Well, yes; I should hardly call her pretty, 
though — it is not the right word,” said a gen- 
tleman behind whom, unseen, Joan was catching 
her breath after a rapid two-step. “ She is fine- 
looking. She will be a magnificent woman. I 
shall tell Darrington that I envy him his 
daughter.” 

“Not daughters?” asked his companion. 

“ Oh, the other is well enough — pretty, but 
that one is noble, intelligent, full of force and 
character,” rejoined the first speaker. 

Joan moved away; it did not seem right to 
overhear their guests' comments on the family, 
though they were flattering. 

“That Darrington girl is most unusual for 
her age,” an old lady said as Joan drifted by. 
“And so unconscious of good looks, and one 
would depend on her for anything!” 

“Well, I’m glad they all think Georgie so 
pretty,” said Joan to herself. “ She is as sweet 


Proves a Swan 


309 


as she can be to-night, but I am quite sure she 
knows it — not that if s her fault, nor any harm, 
if only a person has sense. ,, 

Two ladies, an old gentleman and a much 
younger one were standing with Mrs. Darring- 
ton and Miss Chisholm a little later, as Joan 
came toward them through the folding doors 
from the room at their back. Here again they 
were apparently speaking of Georgie, and Joan 
paused before interrupting them with a question 
which she had for Aunt Deb. 

“I am very glad you think so,” Mrs. Dar- 
rington was murmuring. “Of course we prize 
her for her character, — she is a noble girl, — but 
it is pleasant to hear her called fine-looking.” 

“ She is very young, dear madam, but when 
she is grown up she will be handsome,” said the 
old gentleman decidedly. 

“We hope she won’t grow up much higher,” 
laughed Mrs. Darrington. 

“We shall speak of her when she is twenty- 
five as the ‘ handsome Miss Darrington/ ” said 
one of the ladies. “She has a rare type of 
face.” 


310 Nut-Brown Joan 

“ Her face is not as rare as is her heart and 
soul,” said Aunt Deb, to Joan’s surprise, for 
she had always been sorry to think that Aunt 
Deb was not wholly satisfied with Georgie. 

“ She has been such a long, thin, brown little 
child,” said Mrs. Darrington, “that it will take 
me a good while to think of her as handsome. 
We have considered her sister Georgie our 
beauty — if we had one — but I see that it may 
be Joan instead.” 

Joan gasped and rushed away, running into 
a waiter and spilling the coffee he bore without 
seeing the stony look of mortal offence that 
settled upon his clean-shaven face as a pall. 

She! Joan! She was handsome! And her 
mother, actually her mother, saying that it was 
she — Joan — who was her handsome daughter, 
not Georgie! 

Joan’s head spun, and she sat down on the 
stairs, quite giddy from the shock. But as she 
grew accustomed to the idea, how delicious it 
was! No vanity stirred in Joan at this amazing 
discovery, only pure, innocent joy and gratitude 
that she was not bad to look upon; the honest, 


Proves a Swan 


3i i 


light-hearted pleasure in an unexpected boon 
which is the feeling with which a humble, 
healthy nature welcomes its blessings. 

She sprang to her feet with her usual impulse 
to find Darby and share her happiness with him, 
but something held her back. No; she would 
not tell Darby that all these kind folk had been 
talking of her, not of Georgie, this happy night. 

It was Trude, beauty-loving, and Joan-loving, 
sensible little Trudie to whom she would tell 
the great news. 

She found her younger sister contentedly 
sipping lemonade, hidden behind a great jar of 
ferns, watching the maze of colours floating 
past her, in a paradise of her own. 

“ Trude, Trudie, what do you think ?” cried 
Joan. Then, without giving her time to think, 
she proceeded to tell Trude all that she had 
heard. 

“And they meant me, me — Joan — the brown, 
thin little girl who always hated so to be the 
ugly duckling! And now, to think of it! They 
seem to consider she proves a swan, after all ! ” 

“H’m!” said Trude, less moved by the as- 


312 


Nut-Brown Joan 

founding intelligence for having held her settled 
opinion all along. “ That’s nothing. I always 
said you were the best-looking one in this family ; 
Georgie’s pretty, but you are fine.” 

Mr. Darrington, bringing Darby in his train, 
came upon the two girls at this moment. “ Oh, 
here you are, Joan!” he said. “We have been 
looking for you. The cotillion is about to 
begin, and here is your partner, wandering about 
like Orpheus, unable to find you. I took com- 
passion on him Why, what has happened? 

You look excited, Joan,” her father added, 
breaking off suddenly as he caught Joan’s eye. 

“Nothing; I’m not used to gaiety, papa — 
that’s all,” said Joan, shaking her head at Trude. 

But that young person was not to be silenced. 
“Joan’s been going about hearing all sorts of 
people talking about a handsome, or fine-looking, 
or something like that, Darrington girl, papa,” 
she said. “Of course she thought it was 
Georgie until she heard mama say it was Joan. 
Then she was so surprised she nearly tumbled 
down — as though anyone would think she was 
homely — now, anyway!” 


Proves a Swan 


3i3 


“ Would you like so much to be pretty, Joan, 
dear?” asked her father, smoothing the rich 
brown hair which lay for a moment on his 
shoulder. 

“ It has been hard to be homely so many years, 
papa,” said Joan. “I’m not so vain as you 
think, but it is lovely to be called pretty.” 

“ So you think one sort of homeliness is 
enough, after all ? ” said her father, trying to 
raise the hidden face. “And you have quite 
thoroughly acquired Aunt Deb’s kind of home- 
liness! Well, I will tell you how you look to 
me, Joan: You look like a girl so good, and 
dear, and true that the man is blessed who calls 
you daughter. What do you think about it, 
Darby?” 

“I never looked at her as a daughter, sir,” 
said Darby, with his twinkle. “But she looks 
like the best chum a fellow ever had, and she is 
mighty handsome to-night, there’s no doubt 
about it.” 

“ Oh, you are spoiling me, ruining me ! Come 
on and dance that cotillion, Darby! This is 
worse than waltzing for making a girl dizzy,” 


314 Nut-Brown Joan 

cried Joan. “ Especially one who has always, 
all her fifteen years, thought that she was a 
homely girl.” 

“H’m!” said Trude, with her characteristic 
little scornful hitch of the chin. “H’m! You 
a homely girl ! ” 


THE END 



'COPY DEL. TO CAT. DIV. 

WAR 2 % 1905 


MAR 28 1905 






















